MASTER 

NEGA  TIVE 

NO.  91-801 93 


MICROFILMED  1991 
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\ 


AUTHOR: 


HINTON,  JAMES,  M.D. 


TITLE: 


MAN  AND  HIS  DWELLING 
PLACE;  AN  ESSAY  ... 


PLACE: 


NEW  YORK 


DA  TE : 


1859 


COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARIES 
PRESERVATION  DEPARTMENT 

BIBLIOGRAPHIC  MICROFORM  TARGFT 


Master  Negative  # 


Original  Material  as  Filmed  -  Existing  Bibliographic  Record 


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AND  HIS  DWELLING  PLACE 


^^ 


AN  ESSAY 

TOWARDS  THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  NATURE 


;•'■■ 


As  for  the  possibility,  they  are  ill  discoverers  who 
think  there  is  no  land  when  they  can  see  nothing  but 
Bea.  '-LobdBaoon.  On  the  Adoancement  of  Learning. 


REDFIELD 
34  Bekkmax    Street,  New  Yobk 

1859 


, >• 


W 


/ 


> 


EDWARD  O.  JENKINS, 

Printer  ^  J$terrotgprr, 
N&  26  Fbankfokt  STmKR. 


There  was  an  old  man  who  had  abundance  of  gold.  And.  the  sound  of 
the  gold  was  pleasant  to  his  ears,  and  his  eye  delighted  in  its  brightness. 
By  day  he  thought  of  gold,  and  his  dreams  were  of  gold  by  night  Hia 
hands  were  full  of  gold,  and  he  rejoiced  in  the  multitude  of  hia  chests. 
But  he  was  faint  with  hunger,  and  his  trembling  limbs  shivered  beneath  his 
rags.  No  kind  hand  ministered  to  him,  nor  cheerful  voices  made  music  in 
his  home.  * 

And  there  came  a  child  to  the  old  man,  and  said :  Father,  I  have  found  a 
secret.  We  are  rich.  You  shall  not  be  hungry  and  miserable  any  more. 
Gold  will  buy  all  things.  Then  the  old  man  was  wroth,  and  said :  Would 
you  take  from  me  my  gold  ?  Eastern  Parables.    * 


w 


284973 


liH' 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTION 

1 

BOOK   I. 

OF  SCIENCE. 

CHAP. 

I.  THE  WORK  OF  SCIENCE 

n.  THE  LAWS  OF  NATURE     ...'.'*' 

III.  THE  ILLUSTRATION  FROM  ASTRONOMY 2 

IV.  OF  KNOWING 

V.  OF  BEING     .    .  ^^ 

76 

BOOK  II. 
OP  PHILOSOPHY. 

I.  OF  MAN 

n.  OF  THE  WORLD      ..././.*.**"''*     ^^ 
IIL  OF  IDEALISM :  AND  THE  PROPER  MEANING  OF  THE 

WORD  MATTER     . 

__   ^^  "  .    .      109 

nr.  OF   SCEPTICISM;    AND   THE  GROUNDS  OF  KNOWL- 

EDGE  .... 

.    .     184 

V.  OF  POSITIVISM.-   AND  THE  RELATION  OF  SCIENCE 
TO  PHILOSOPHY     . 

TI.  OF  MYSTICISM:  AND  THE  USE  OF  THE  INTELLECT     lfl'3 

VII.  OF  NEGATION    .    . 

' 179 

[71 


^  CONTENTS. 

V 

BOOK  III. 

OF    RELIGION. 

OUT. 

I.  OF  DEATH '^ 

II  OF  LIFE , 201 

III.  OF  DAMNATION gOCi 

IV.  OF  REDEMPTION ^IS 

V.  OF  HEAVEN 226 

VI.  OF  THE  RELIGION  OF  NATURE 333 

VIL  OF  FREEWILL 338 

Vin.  OF  THE  SELF 345 

BOOK  IV. 

OF    ETHICS. 

I.  OF  THE  FACT  OF  HUMAN  LIFE 263 

IL  OF  ILLUSION 2^8 

III.  OF  REALITY 274 

IV.  OF  WRONGNESS 281 

BOOK  V. 

DIALOGUES. 

DIALOGUE  L 298 

DIALOGUE  n. 323 

DLALOGUE  IH ]    ]  ^^ 

DIALOGUE  IV gg,y 


MAN  AND  HIS  DWELLING  PLACE. 


INTRODUCTION. 

He  who  has  seen  obscurities  which  appeared  impenetrable  in  physical  and  mathemaU- 
cal  science  suddenly  dispelled,  and  the  most  barren  and  unpromising  fields  of  inquiry 
converted,  as  if  by  inspiration,  into  rich  and  inexhaustible  springs  of  knowledge  and 
power  on  a  simple  change  of  our  point  of  view,  or  by  merely  bringing  to  bear  upon  them 
some  principle  which  it  never  occurred  before  to  try,  will  surely  be  the  very  last  to 
acquiesce  in  any  dispiriting  prospects  of  either  the  present  or  ftiture  destinies  of  mankind. 

*  Sm  J.  Hkeschel  :  Dix,  on  Nat.  PhOoti^y. 

It  has  been  well  observed  that  the  child  and  the  savage 
invent  an  explanation  of  every  thing  they  do  not  under- 
stand, whilst  the  man  whose  powers  are  matured  and 
disciplined  investigates.  He  has  learnt  to  be  patient,  and 
to  wait  for  grounds  of  knowledge  before  he  supposes  him- 
self to  know.  Thus  progress  is  made.  From  investiga- 
tion comes  discovery.  Our  partial  and  incompetent  reason, 
brought  into  contact  with  the  great  facts  of  nature,  be^ 
comes  itself  enlarged.  For  the  natural  suppositions  by 
which  man  explains  the  unknown  are  not  equal  to  the 
scope  of  things.  They  express  himself,  his  ignorance,  his 
limited  relations. 

All  advance  in  knowledge  is  a  deliverance  of  man  from 
himself.  Slowly  and  painfully  he  learns  that  he  is  not  the 
measure  of  truth,  that  the  fact  may  be  very  different  from 
the  appearance  to  him.  The  lesson  is  hard  but  the  reward 
is  great.  So  he  escapes  from  illusion  and  error,  from 
ignorance  and  failure.  Directing  his  thoughts  and  energies 

1*  [9] 


10 


INTRODUCTION. 


no  more  according  to  his  own  impressions,  but  according 
to  the  truth  of  things,  he  finds  himself  in  possession  of  an 
unimaginable  power  alike  of  understanding  and  of  acting. 
To  a  truly  marvellous  extent  he  is  the  lord  of  nature. 

But  the  conditions  of  this  lordship  are  inexorable. 
They  are  the  surrender  of  prepossessions,  the  abandon- 
ment of  assumptions,  the  confession  of  ignorance  :  the 
open  eye  and  humble  heart.  Hence  in  all  passing  from 
error  to  truth  we  learn  something  respecting  ourselves,  as 
well  as  respecting  the  object  of  our  study.  Simultaneously 
with  our  better  knowledge  we  recognise  the  reason  of  our 
ignorance,  and  perceive  what  defect  on  our  part  has  caused 
us  to  think  wrongly. 

Either  the  world  is  such  as  it  appears  to  us,  or  it  is 
not.  If  it  be  not,  there  must  be  some  condition  affecting 
ourselves  which  modifies  the  impression  that  we  receive 
from  it.  And  this  condition  must  be  operative  on  all 
mankind  ;  it  must  relate  to  man  as  a  whole  rather  than  to 
individual  men. 

So  far  as  we  could  judge  without  reference  to  experience, 
either  of  these  cases  might  be  supposed.  There  is  perhaps 
no  sufficient  reason,  a  priori,  why  we  should  not  imagine 
that  the  appearance  might  correspond  with  the  fact  of 
things  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  we  know  that  circum- 
stances which  affect  ourselves  do  continually  modify  our 
perception  of  objects,  so  that  their  appearance  differs  more 
or  less  considerably  from  that  which  they  truly  are.  And 
in  some  cases  this  difference  of  the  appearance  from  the 
fact  is  very  great.  Perhaps  nothing  can  be  more  unlike 
the  planets  than  the  appearance  they  present  to  us  ;  or,  to 
make  the  case  more  striking,  let  us  imagine  our  own  earth 
viewed  from  one  of  the  other  planets.  Can  anything  be 
more  different  from  this  dark  solid  varied  mass  than  the 
bright  spot  it  would  appear  ?  The  dissimilarity  is  extreme. 


f 


INTRODUCTION. 


11 


\ 


Therefore,  when  we  approach  inquiries  relating  to 
nature,  and  the  true  relations  which  we  bear  to  the  uni- 
verse, we  must  be  treading  on  unsafe  ground  if  we  assume, 
without  investigation,  one  of  these  possible  events  to  be 
true  to  the  exclusion  of  the  other.  We  cannot  be  sure 
that  tlie  world  does  not  differ  in  extreme  degree  from  its 
appearance.  All  experience  combines  to  teach  us  caution. 
The  history  of  human  error  is  a  history  of  the  taking  it  for 
granted  that  things  are  as  they  appear. 

Speaking  generally,  we  may  say  that  all  speculation 
hitherto  has  been  based  upon  the  supposition  that  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  world  does  correspond  with  the  fact.  All 
systems  are  attempts  to  represent  the  order  of  things  on 
that  natural  supposition.  And  not  only  is  this  the  case 
with  philosophical  systems,  it  is  equally  true  of  the  ordi- 
nary and  unregulated  ideas  which  lie  in  every  man's  mind. 
All  our  conceptions  are  based  on  the  implied  postulate 
that  the  world  is  as  it  appears. 

How  far  the  result  is  satisfactory  each  man  must  judge 
for  himself.  But  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  another 
course  is  open.  If  we  could  recognise  any  element  in  our 
condition  that  should  have  the  effect  of  causing  the  appear- 
ance of  the  world  in  which  we  arc  to  differ  from  the  fact, 
the  issue  of  our  speculative  labors  might  at  least  be  differ- 
ent from  that  which  it  is  at  present. 

That  appearances  should  be  deceptive  has  an  evident 
necessity  in  the  nature  of  things.  For  the  appearance 
of  every  object,  or  the  way  in  which  it  primarily  impresses 
us,  depends  upon  our  relations  in  respect  to  it.*  But 
these  relations,  infinitely  varied  as  they  are,  must  be  ascer- 
tained by  the  study  of  those  objects  themselves.  We  have 
not  any  natural  or  intuitive  knowledge  of  them.     There- 


•  Apparent  size,  for  example,  depends  upon  our  distance. 


/ 


1- 


/ 


J 


12 


INTKODUCTIOX. 


fore  as  our  relations  to  the  world  become  more  widelv 
LuTof  n"'  ""'"■'  '°°''"""^  '""'•"•"S  '»  '•«<="g'>i«e  as  th'e 
trom  that  which  those  perceptions  at  first  suggest.  Nor 
do  we  feel  ,n  doing  this  any  embarrassment  or  difficulty  • 
It  IS  the  very  thing  which  gives  to  our  conceptions  clear- 
ness and  simplicity.  '^ 

For  right  knowledge,  it  is  necessary  that  the  relations 
between  ourselves  and  the  objects  that  affect  us  should  be 

rLi      .    '        ^PP^'-a°<'«  must  be  such  as  it  is  to  us. 

hrth^r  ''Tf  '"  '""'"  •'^^''^^  °f  «"'  distance-so 
bright  because  of  the  laws  of  reflection  of  light;  they  appear 

toberevolvingaround  the  earth  because  w^ea^bdngTo; 
tWnk  of  tl  ^^  these  things,  it  is  no  longer  strange  to  us  to 
think  of  those  specks  of  light  as  orbs  kindred  to  our  own  • 

TJ!  if ',  '°  ""^^  '^'"^  '"  "•^P^^'t  to  sense  as  yet 
raster  worlds  glowing  with  a  radiance  of  their  own.     We 

entirely  mistake  if  we  imagine  that  there  is  any  difficulty 
to  the  human  mmd  in  recognising  under  any  sensuous  ap^ 
pearance  a  fact  how  unlike  soever  to  that  appearing 
Nothing  is  more  natural :  to  nothing  is  our  naSve  tend: 
ency  more  strong.    The  discovery  of  facts  beneath  appear- 
ances IS  the  very  work  of  the  intellect,  and  is  indeedTut 
Je  recognition  of  our  own  relations  to  the  universe.    Bu 
there  is  always  a  difficulty  in  first  taking  this  step  ■  that 
which,  when  it  is  familiar,  it  seems  impLble  t^'doubt 
when  It  was  new  seemed  not  less  impossible  to  believe' 
The  source  of  this  difficulty  lies  in  our  very  constitutL 

to  the  fact,  until  by  increasing  knowledge  we  have  learnt 
otherwise.  The  intellect  demands  that^every  a;;earTnee 
should  be  accounted  for.  Every  impression  on  us  musi 
have  some  cause ;  and  we  necessarily  suppose  a  causeTr 


I 


INTRODUCTION. 


18 


respondent  to  every  such  impression  until  some  other  fact 
be  shown  to  which  it  may  be  more  reasonably  referred. 
This  constitutes  the  formation  of  hypotheses  ;  which  are 
accordingly  necessities  of  our  mental  being.  For  example, 
before  astronomy  was  understood,  men  necessarily  sup- 
posed that  there  existed  in  the  heavens  a  small  bright  disc 
.  such  as  the  moon  appears.  This  was  a  hypothesis  which 
the  recognition  of  the  true  moon  sets  aside.  <-9        , 

Hence  arises  one  chief  difficulty  in  the  advance  of  know- 
ledge. For  it  is  the  proper  work  of  the  intellect  in  remov- 
ing ignorance  to  connect  our  impressions  or  sensations  with 
facts  different  from  those  which  are  most  naturally  sug- 
gested to  us.  The  advance  of  knowledge  consists  in  the 
substitution  of  accurate  conceptions  for  natural  ones.  New 
truths,  therefore,  always  come,  not  only  with  an  aspect  of 
strangeness,  but  in  apparent  opposition  to  received  and 
established  beliefs  ;  sometimes  in  opposition  to  views  held 
sacred,  or  fundamental  to  all  knowledge.  The  hypothesis 
or  cause  that  had  been  supposed  in  ignorance  in  order  to 
account  for  the  appearance,  has  a  hold  upon  the  mind  as 
if  it  were  a  fact  certainly  known.  It  is  the  hardest  thing 
possible  for  men  to  remember  that  such  hypothesis  has  no 
foundation  except  their  own  ignorance.  The  fact  that 
they  have  been  obliged  to  suppose  it,  and  that  to  have 
denied  it  without  showing  how  the  impressions  of  which 
they  are  conscious  could  be  otherwise  produced,  would 
have  been  to  leave  a  ridiculous  vacancy,  and  to  run  in  the 
face  of  common  sense,  often  overpowers  all  other  considera- 
tions. The  demand  upon  them  to  give  up  that  which  they 
have  considered  as  of  all  things  the  most  certain,  is  too 
much.  Evidence  is  of  little  avail  against  that  feeling. 
The  utmost  simplicity,  beauty  and  necessity  in  the  new 
opinion  often  go  for  nothing  in  comparison  with  it. 
And  there  is,  besides,  always  this  argument  in  favor  of 


:'l 


r 


14 


INTRODUCTION. 


a  hypothesis  that  has  by  long  use  become  established  as  a 
truth :  it  is  so  natural ;  it  answers  so  exactly  to  the  im- 
pression or  appearance  which  it  is  used  to  account  for. 
This  must  be  the  case ;  being  invented  for  the  very  purpose 
of  accounting  for  our  impressions,  a  hypothesis  cannot  be 
wanting  in  exact  correspondence  with  them.    In  this  re- 
J'pect  it  must  have  an  advantage,  and  a  very  powerful  one 
in  relation  to  some  of  our  strongest  feelings,  over  the 
truth  which  seeks  to  supplant  it.    For  that  truth  demands 
reflection  and  thought ;  it  is  in  a  certain  sense  opposed  to 
our  first  natural  conceptions,  and  involves  an  exercise  of 
reason  and  a  regard  to  the  mutual  bearing  of  various  facts. 
Hence  the  struggle  for  the  life  of  a  hypothesis  is  the  more 
prolonged.    If  the  hypothesis  be  assumed,  everything  is 
simple,  our  impressions  need  no  correcting,  and  the  case  is 
just  as  it  seems.     To  all  this  there  is  nothing  to  be  op- 
posed but  the  argument  that,  plausible  as  that  belief  may 
be,  investigation  and  a  just  use  of  our  powers  forbid  us  to 
rest  in  it.    The  weak  part  of  the  hypothesis  is  not  that 
it  does  not  perfectly  account  for  our  impressions,— this  it 
can  hardly  fail  to  do,— but  that  it  will  not  bear  investiga- 
tion.    The  existence  of  that  which  is  seen  in  spectral 
illusions  or  in  dreams  would  account  perfectly  for  their 
occurrence,  and  we  do  indeed  at  first  always  account  for 
them  so.    That  is  the  natural  hypothesis  ;  but  examination 
proves  it  impossible,  and  we  have  learnt  accordingly  to 
assign  them  to  other  causes.    Which  causes,  it  may  be 
observed,  are  very  far  from  being  such  as  we  should  have 
thought  likely. 

These  are  in  part  the  reasons  which  render  the  establish- 
ment of  a  new  truth  so  difficult.  Every  such  truth  has 
to  encounter  a  hypothesis  which  perfectly  accounts  for  the 
appearances,  makes  little  demand  on  the  thoughtfulness 
and  reason  of  men,  and,  above  all,  is  established  as  a 


INTRODUCTION. 


15 


I 


certain  and  unassailable  truth,  based  on  an  experience 
which  cannot  deceive.  It  is  no  wonder  that  under  these 
circumstances  false  views  of  nature  should  have  struggled 
long  with  advancing  knowledge.  We  should  not  complain 
that  it  has  been  so  :  that  were  to  find  fault  with  the  very 
faculties  and  mental  tendencies  through  which  alone  we 
have  been  made  capable  of  learning. 

Especially  we  should  avoid  the  injustice  with  which  it 
is  too  customary  to  treat  the  past.  We  are  apt  to  think 
that  the  men  who  strove  so  long  against  opinions  which 
are  to  us  almost  self-evident  must  have  been  less  open  to 
conviction  and  less  willing  to  abide  by  the  results  of  in- 
vestigation than  ourselves.  But  herein  we  do  a  twofold 
wrong :  we  cast  undeserved  reproach  upon  the  dead,  and 
inflict  a  deeper  injury  upon  ourselves.  Reading  history 
so,  making  it  feed  our  own  self-confidence  and  pride,  is 
sadly  to  abuse  its  lesson.  Men  do  not  alter :  in  these 
days  they  are  no  more  willing  to  give  up  what  they  con- 
sider settled  facts  and  principles  than  they  were  of  old. 
In  all  ages  men  have  been  willing  to  apply  principles  that 
have  been  proved  true,  to  do  again  in  other  forms  that 
which  has  been  done  before  ;  in  no  age  willing,  or  likely 
to  be  willing,  to  do  more.  In  the  past  we  may  read  the 
present :  we  forget  what  those  men  whose  errors  we  pity 
were  called  upon  to  do  ;  we  forget  how  much  we  owe  them 
for  what  they  did.  They  were  called  upon  to  set  aside 
the  very  principles  on  which  their  mental  life  was  moulded, 
to  abandon  as  false  convictions  which  seemed  to  carry 
away  with  them  the  entire  basis  on  which  a  sound  judg- 
ment or  a  steadfast  faith  could  be  sustained.  And  they  did 
it.  Trusting  in  God,  the  world  has  given  up  over  and 
over  again  well  nigh  all  its  most  assured  convictions ; 
trusting  in  God  that  the  fact  must  be  better  than  their 


16 


INTRODUCTION. 


thought.    Is  it  for  us  to  boast  ourselves  ;  are  we  willing 
to  do  as  much  again  ? 

The  truth  is  that  every  generation  of  men  thinks  that 
it  has  at  last  arrived  at  the  ultimate  principles  of  know- 
ledge, and  that  whatever  mental  revolutions  may  have 
been  necessary  before,  no  more  will  be  needed  thereafter. 
It  must  be  so.  The  very  fact  of  men  honestly  striving  to 
do  their  best  involves  it.  Man  cannot  foresee  the  future  ; 
his  little  horizon  must  seem  to  include  the  scope  of  heaven 
and  earth.  Ever,  therefore,  he  is  anxious  to  know  more 
in  accordance  with  his  own  ideas,  but  he  cannot  anticipate 
conceiving  differently.  Yet  it  might  not  be  impossible  to 
draw  from  history  a  lesson  that  should  make  us  truly 
wiser,  if  we  would  remember  that  the  thing  which  has 
been  is  the  criterion  of  that  which  is  likely  to  be ;  and 
that,  as  other  ages,  so  we  also  might  be  called  upon  to 
admit  ourselves  in  error  in  some  of  those  opinions  in 
respect  to  which  we  have  been  most  sure  that  we  are 
right. 

The  idea  which  is  commonly  entertained  of  nature  is 
the  best  conception  that  men  have  been  able  to  form  re- 
specting it,  in  the  absence  of  definite,  or  at  least  of  com- 
plete knowledge.  Accordingly  it  corresponds  precisely  to 
their  first  natural  impressions,  which  indeed  it  is  con- 
structed  to  represent  as  closely  as  possible.  It  is  therefore 
conformable  to  all  experience  that  the  advance  of  know- 
ledge should  bring  men  into  collision  with  this  conception, 
and  that  it  should  exist  as  an  obstacle  to  a  truer  interpre- 
tation of  the  facts.  If  it  be  the  case  that  our  natural 
impressions  fall  short  of  the  truth,  then,  of  necessity  the 
ideas  to  which  we  have  had  recourse  to  account  for  those 
impressions  must  be  inadequate.  They  must  embody  our 
ignorance,  and   differ   essentially  from  those  which  we 


INTROBUCTIOX. 


17 


should  form  if  the  true  relations  which  exist  between  our- 
selves and  the  world  were  known  to  us.  In  a  word,  our 
conception  of  nature  is  a  hypothesis. 

Like  othor  hypotheses,  however,  it  has  had  its  necessity 
and  its  use,  nor  can  it  be  set  aside  until  the  truth  be 
known— the  fact  itself,  and  the  reason  that  we  are  affected 
by  it  as  we  are.  The  question  which  demands  an  answer 
in  respect  to  the  world  is  at  least  susceptible  of  a  distinct 
and  explicit  statement.  We  require  such  a  knowledge  of 
our  own  relation  to  the  fact  that  truly  exists  as  shall  en- 
able us  to  understand  how  that  fact,  being  such  as  it  is, 
should  affect  us  as  it  does. 

Many  questions  of  an  abstract  nature  suggest  themselves 
here.  Volumes  have  been  occupied  in  discussing  whether 
such  knowledge  be  possible ;  the  nature  of  perception  and 
of  consciousness.  But  the  sole  answer  that  will  be  at- 
tempted now  is  a  practical  one  :  for  the  question  is  one 
that  must  be  solved  by  experience  and  not  by  anticipation. 
It  is  submitted  that  man's  relation  to  the  fact  of  the  uni- 
verse may  be  ascertained  by  investigation,  and  that  when 
that  relation  is  understood  it  may  be  known  also  what  that 
fact  must  be,  and  why  it  affects  man  as  it  does  :  and  that 
this  knowledge  is  obtained  through  thinking  more  humbly 
of  ourselves  ;  through  giving  up  our  natural  self-asser- 
tion, and  being  willing  to  admit  that  man  may  be  want- 
ing in  that  which  he  most  confidently  assumes  that  he  pos- 
sesses. 

A  brief  outline  of  the  view  that  will  be  advocated  is  here 
subjoined.  It  is  thrown  into  the  form  of  propositions  or 
theses,  as  a  statement  of  that  which  is  afterwards  to  be  dis- 
cussed. This  plan  has  been  adopted  in  order  that  the  con- 
ception may  be  presented  in  its  connexion  as  a  whole  before 
any  part  is  treated  in  detail. 

Briefly,  the  position  maintained  i»  this  :  That  the  study 


18 


INTRODUCTION. 


I 


of  nature  leads  to  the  conclusion  that  there  is  a  Defective- 
ness in  man  which  modiaes  his  perception  ;  that  the  uni- 
verse is  not  truly  correspondent  to  his  impressions,  but  is 
of  a  more  perfect  and  higher  kind. 

To  judge  rightly  of  nature,  therefore,  we  must  not  be 
guided  by  our  own  impressions  merely,  but  must  remember 
man's  defectiveness.  For  if  man  be  defective,  his  appre- 
hension and  feeling  of  nature  will  be  inadequate,  and  that 
which  he  feels  to  exist  will  differ  from  the  true  reality  by 
defect. 

Whether  this  simple  change  in  oui-  point  of  view,  the 
application  of  the  principle  of  considering  the  defectiveness 
of  man  in  our  judgment  of  nature,  have  the  power  of '  dis- 
pelling obscurities  which  have  appeared  impenetrable,  and 
converting  an  unpromising  field  of  inquiry  into  a  rich 
spring  of  knowledge  and  power,'  may  appear  hereafter. 
It  has  an  immediate  bearing,  thus  : 

1.    Nature  (or  the  universe  or  the  world)  is  not  truly 
and  in  itself  such  as  it  is  to  man's  feeling.    That  which 
man  feels  to  be  differs  from  that  which  is,  apart  from  him 
hy  defect,  ' 

We  perceive  the  world  as  possessing  certain  qualities, 
or  as  existing  in  a  certain  way  which  we  call  physical.' 
We  term  it  the  physical  world. 

This  mode  of  existence  involves  inertness.  That  which 
is  physical  does  not  act,  except  passively,  as  It  is  acted 
upon.    Inertness  is  inaction.* 

^  That  which  is  inert,  therefore,  differs  from  that  which  is  not 
inert  by  defect,  (by  absence  of  action  or  of  active  power.) 
2.     We  cannot  avoid  conceiving  another  mode  of  exist- 
ence besides  that  which  is  inert.     We  conceive  of  Being 


INTRODUCTION. 


19 


♦  From  the  Greek  word  ep<J«,  to  act. 


which  possesses  a  true  spontaneous  and  primary  activity. 
This  is  necessary,  since  there  must  be  such  a  true  activity, 
or  there  could  not  be  any  action  at  all. 

To  this  truly  active  mode  of  Being  the  word  spiritual 
has  been  applied ;  and  in  this  sense  that  Avord  will  here  be 
used.  That  to  which  inertness  does  not  belong,  but  which 
truly  acts  in  a  way  in  which  physical  things  do  not  act,  is 
meant  by  the  term  spiritual. 

TJie  physical,  therefore,  differs  from  the  spiritual  (in  this 
particular  of  its  inertness)  hy  defect, 

3.  It  is  submitted  that  it  is  man's  defectiveness  which 
makes  him  feel  the  world  as  thus  defective  :  that  nature  is 
not  truly  inert,  but  is  so  to  man's  feeling  by  defect  in  him. 

We  have  conceived  nature  to  be  inert,  or  physical ;  man 
to  be  not  inert,  or  spiritual. 

It  is  submitted  that  investigation  demands  that  we  should 
correct  this  natural  supposition  :  That  the  perceived  inert- 
ness or  defect  in  nature  is  due  to  man's  defectiveness. 

4.  Either  the  universe  is  defective  as  being  without 
action  (inert),  or  man  is  defective.  There  is  to  us  an  in- 
ertness, it  determines  our  whole  state.  We  have  to  learn 
whether  it  be  man's  or  nature's. 

Science  gives  answer  to  this  question.  By  it  proof  is 
given  that  the  perceived  defect  must  be  ascribed  to  man's 
condition,  and  that  nature  is  not  truly  inert  as  it  is  felt  to 
be.  His  own  condition  having  imposed  on  man  a  false 
opinion  respecting  the  universe,  science  emancipates  him 
therefrom ;  it  brings  man  face  to  face  with  nature,  and 
makes  him  know  himself 

o.  The  history  of  science  is  the  attempt  of  man  to  under- 
stand the  universe  on  the  supposition  that  the  inertness  (or 
defect)  exists  in  nature  as  it  appears  to  him  to  exist.  But 
this  attempt  leads  to  the  result,  entirely  unforeseen,  of 
transferring  the  defect  to  himself ;  and  proving  that  both 


20 


INTRODUCTION. 


INTRODUCTION. 


21 


tlie  fact  of  nature  and  liis  own  state  of  being  are  different 
from  that  which  he  supposed. 

This  result  science  accomplishes — 

1st.  By  demonstrating  an  absolute  inertness  in  that 
which  appears,  bringing  all  phenomena  under  the  law  of 
passive  or  physical  causation. 

2nd.  By  giving  evidence  of  a  fact  different  from  that 
which  appears  to  us,  showing  that  it  deals  only  with  plie- 
nomena,  and  not  with  the  very  essence  of  nature. 

It  is  affirmed,  therefore,  that  inertness  does  not  belong 
to  the  essence  and  true  being  of  nature,*  but  only  to  the 
phenomenon. 

It  is  introduced  by  man.  He  perceives  defect  without 
him  only  because  there  is  defect  within  him. 

6.  To  be  inert  has  the  same  meaning  as  to  be  dead.  So 
we  speak  of  nature,  thinking  it  to  be  inert,  as  *  dead  mat- 
ter.' To  say  that  man  introduces  inertness  into  nature, 
implies  a  deadness  in  him  :  it  is  to  say  that  he  wants  life. 
This  is  the  proposition  which  is  affirmed.  This  condition 
which  we  call  our  life  is  not  the  true  life  of  man. 

7.  The  book  that  has  had  greater  influence  upon  the 
world  than  all  others  differs  from  all  others  in  affirming 
that  man  wants  life,  and  in  making  that  statement  the  basis 
of  all  that  it  contains  respecting  the  past  and  present  and 
future  of  mankind. 

Science  thus  pays  homage  to  the  Bible.  What  that-book 
has  declared  as  if  with  authority  so  long  ago,  she  has  at 
last  deciphered  on  the  page  of  nature.  This  is  not  man's 
true  life. 

It  is  a  willing  homage.  For  all  men  love  the  Bible  : 
some  of  those  not  least  who  have  most  felt  themselves  com- 
pelled to  oppose  it.    In  every  heart  the  love  is  deeper  than 


4 


♦  The  proof  is  deferred,  not  belonging  to  this  place.    See  Book  I.  Chap,  i 


the  hatred.  For  what  book  has  sounded  so  the  depths  of 
experience,  or  scaled  like  it  the  highest  pinnacles  of 
thought  ?  What  man  has  not  learnt  through  it  better  to 
know  himself? 

Therefore  if  the  thought  that  man  wants  life  seem  at 
first  strange  to  the  intellectual  apprehension,  the  conscience 
and  the  heart  respond.  This  is  not  our  true  life.  Illusion, 
and  disappointment,  and  wrong  are  in  it.  We  ought  to 
be  other  than  we  are. 

8.  The  statements  of  the  New  Testament  respecting  the 
course  and  history  of  the  world,  starting  with  a  deadness 
m  men,  end  in  their  being  made  alive. 

We  naturally  conceive  the  world  to  be  the  scene  of  man's 
probation.  The  Bible  represents  it  as  the  scene  of  his  re- 
demption. Man  is  being  made  alive  :  rewards  and  punish- 
ment, threatenings  and  retribution,  take  their  place  within 
and  in  subordination  to  this  end. 

9.  That  man  wants  life,  means  that  the  true  life  of  man 
IS  of  another  kind  from  this.  It  corresponds  to  that  true, 
absolute  Being  which  he,  as  he  now  is,  cannot  know. 

He  cannot  know  it  because  he  is  out  of  relation  with  it. 
This  is  his  deadness.     To  know  it  is  to  have  life. 

10.  To  that  absolute  fact  of  Being  the  Bible  applies  the 
words  spiritual  and  eternal.    These  are  the  right  words 
To  be  spiritflal  is  to  be  not  inert.     To  be  eternal  is  to  be. 

The  unknown  fact  of  nature  is  the  spiritual  and  eternal 
world  ;  ^  the  things  that  are  not  seen.'  But  man  wants 
tliat  true  life  which  would  place  him  in  union  with  it. 
Therefore  to  him  tlie  world  is  temporal  and  physical.  He 
does  not  know  the  fact.  Therefore  he  feels  that  to  be 
which  is  not. 

In  other  words  :  there  is  not  a  physical  world,  and  a 
spiritual  world  besides,  but  the  spiritual  world  which  alone 
IS,  IS  physical  to  man :  the  physical  being  the  mode  in 


22 


IXTRODUCTIOX. 


WeljT'^f  h-  defectiveness,  perceives  the  spiritual. 

The  necessary  bearings  of  the  conception  that  has  been 

hus  proposed  may  relieve  from  the  charge  of  p'esumDtio; 

the  attempt  to  comprehend  in  one  view  so  man';  thinS  aS 

trr:rfoV;h?;r""^- ''-'  ^^  ^  -^  ^-^^^ 

be  felt  rheT'r  ""'/PP'^  ^'^  *•"«  "''j^'tion  that  will 

IT -^r  =--"  sr:r; 

a  tempoTaryTxpedSt  U  '""Tt"*'^  "'*=^"''  ''"*  ""^^  "^^ 
Religion  wTll  nS  „X'    -.r"""  "'  ^  P'™''"*^"*  '^'^^o"- 

sition  thatltlivWanfthVr"  'T'  ""  ^''^  ^"PP"" 
that  recognises  deadnfss  •  m  n  n'rtt''  '"!  l" '^"^^ 
religious     Sciencp  i=  ^f  ■  *  ^^''^  *<=*  becomes 

whileTt  rest,  n^t  ""'"''"^  ^'^''"'^^  fr^™  religion 

wuiie  It  rests  m  phenomena,  but  when  it  +«!,„„  • 

a  fact,  to  which  wp  mnof  ^.  /  '^'^oiciea.  i  hat  union  is 
religious.  A  thlnls  ai  r  r  """'T-  '"'^"^^  '« 
activity  or  interest'of  ^h Lh  the  sa"T.  '''•'*  *'"'"'"'^" 
said.  Nothing  is  unrelig  i  bv "io'S  "'  "^  '^ 
only  so  long  as  we  do  not  see  what  utln  f  '^T"''''  '' 
pose  it  exists,  can  any  form  of  a^  iw  '  :;'j°;,f  ^J />- 
kept  apart  from  our  religious  life  '  ^  *'"'"^''*  ^ 


I 


ft\ 


H 


I      I 


I 


I' 


IXTHODLXTIOX 

V  ' '  23 

^""I  be  the  result  ?    WhT  1  ,v.     f  """  ^  ^''"''  ^"^  ^hat 
"■ess,  what  hope,  what  end t'  Set  '"'"'•  ^''^*  "^ht- 

"■an  ceases  to  ask,  or  will"  cease     r"  T'"'"'''  ^""'"h  »»    ' 
any  man  give  answer,  the  worTd  r  *       ^^'^  'J"^«"'°n«  if 
eager  ear.  '  '"^  '^'"^'^  ^'^tens  with  credulous  and 

But  other  interests  are  nartiol  .  a  .■ 
«'ent.     They  ruffle  the  surfLe  If  '       ,v""'^^' '"'«'  t'^"" 
'ts  depths.    Men  make  them  1    .       ^'^''  ''"*  "o  not  stir 
^^  try  to  be  content  anTfifrottT-'''  *''''''- devotion, 
pomp  of  words  and  snecil!     T    ''®"'  """Pfness  with 
fy  fail  in  their  attl^rdra^ftTr '^"^"' '--"  « 
dearer  questions  ^^fchUVrso^ ,-:'::e^-  ^^ 


iA 


''**"i»l-,.    ii'-fll„l||l  WPfHI 


PI 


\\ 


il 


i 


FORD  EXCHANGSei 


f 


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V* 


f'%?- 


.JbgndK 


A 


I 


/ 

/ 


ir 


'( : 1. 

•c 


■^ 


MAN 


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AND  HIS  DWELLING  PLACE 


w 


' ll- 


1! 


>m 


r     i 


i 


ii| 


!« 


I 


I,;!:: 


/ 


|l   . 


BOOK   I. 


OF   SCIENCE. 


Nature  is  the  domain  of  liberty. — Cosxoe. 


8 


[26] 


( 


CHAPTER    I. 

OP  THE   WOEK   OF   SCIENCB. 

'Tis  life  of  which  our  veins  are  scant.— TA^  Tioo  Voica 

Proof  is  of  three  kinds :  First,  the  Logical,  which  rests 
on  premises,  and  demonstrates  that  according  to  the  laws 
of  the  human  mind  a  certain  conclusion  follows. 

2nd.  The  Historical,  which  shows  that  if  the  case  be  as 
affirmed,  the  course  of  human  thought  in  relation  to  it 
must  have  been  such  as  it  has  been.  It  accounts  for  the 
rise  and  progress  of  opinion. 

3rd.  That  which  might  be  called  the  Expository,  which, 
taking  the  phenomena  as  they  appear,  gives  a  simple  state- 
ment of  the  fact  which  carries  its  own  conviction.  Such 
is  the  evidence  on  which  the  Copernican  astronomy  is 
received  by  the  mass  of  educated  men. 

Eacli  of  these  modes  of  proof  is  indispensable  ;  but  they 
are  by  no  means  of  equal  authority.  The  logical  is  princi- 
pally useful  as  a  means  for  advancing  knowledge.  Its 
conclusions  can  never  have  more  certainty  than  the  prem- 
ises, and  its  end  is  chiefly  to  free  us  from  false  ideas  by 
leading  us  to  false  results  when  we  reason  from  them.  It 
makes  the  latent  error  manifest.  Logic  has  less  to  do  with 
that  which  is  true  than  with  that  which  it  is  reasonable  for 
us  to  think  with  our  particular  amount  of  knowledge. 
The  historical  and  expository  proof  have  more  positive 
value.     The  light  which  they  throw  upon  that  which  has 

(27) 


28 


OF  THE   WORK   OF  SCIENCE. 


[B.  I, 


been  and  which  is,  gives  them  an  authority  to  a  certain 
degree  independent  of  ourselves. 

The  argument  from  premises  to  conclusions  will  be  the 
least  employed  here,  not  because  it  is  inapplicable,  but  be- 
cause it  is  the  least  appropriate.  It  neither  can  nor 
should  produce  conviction.  If  an  improbable  conclusion 
be  enforced  by  such  reasoning,  the  premises  are  immedi- 
ately suspected,  and  rightly  so.  It  will  be  sought,  rather, 
to  unfold  the  conception  that  man  is  such  as  he  is  by  a 
want  of  his  true  and  perfect  being,  and  that  he  is  being 
raised  from  this  state  by  having  the  true  life  imparted  to 
him  ;  and  so  to  exhibit  this  conception  in  its  relation  to 
the  facts  of  human  life  that  it  shall  be  felt  to  be  the  solu- 
tion of  the  problem  of  humanity,  the  true  interpretation  of 
history,  the  key  both  to  what  men  have  thought  and  what 
they  are. 

If  it  can  be  made  manifest  that  the  deadness  and  redemp- 
tion of  man  is  the  reconciliation  of  all  enmities,  the  oneness 
of  all  opposites  ;  that  it  demands  of  no  man  that  he  should 
abandon  that  which  he  has  revered  as  sacred  or  valued  as 
true,  but  is  rather  the  perfecting  of  all  these  things  ;  that 
it  demands  a  willingness  not  to  give  up,  but  only  to  re- 
ceive, putting  new  meaning  into  our  habitual  words,  new 
life  into  our  daily  work,  and  making  light  to  be  where 
darkness  has  been  :  this  is  the  evidence  on  which  reliance 
will  be  placed. 

Two  or  three  observations  will  serve  to  guard  against 
some  possible  sources  of  misapprehension. 

1.  The  first  of  these  relates  to  the  nature  of  Language. 
Words  necessarily  express  to  all  persons  their  own  concep- 
tions. Hence  the  difficulty  of  conveying  by  them  ideas 
that  are  new,  even  in  any  branch  of  ordinary  knowledge. 
Much  greater  is  this  difficulty  when  the  question  relates, 
as  now,  to  the  entire  conception  of  existence.     No  word 


I 


c.  I.] 


OF  THE   WORK   OF  SCIENCE. 


29 


can  be  used  that  is  not  already  fixed,  as  it  were,  to  a  differ- 
ent class  of  ideas,  so  that  in  its  new  use  it  may  either  fail 
to  convey  the  meaning,  or  seem  to  be  misapplied.  This 
difficulty  is  inherent  in  the  subject,  and  is  certainly  much 
increased  by  want  of  skill  on  the  writer's  part.  Perhaps, 
however,  it  will  not  be  found  greater  than  any  one  who 
will  seek  for  the  meaning,  and  make  allowance  for  defi- 
ciencies in  respect  to  words,  whether  unavoidable  or  inad- 
vertent, will  easily  surmount. 

In  no  respect  does  greater  embarrassment  arise  from 
words  than  from  the  various  use  of  the  word  To  he :  em- 
ployed as  it  is  to  express  either  true  existence  or  mere  ap- 
pearance :  ahsoluie,  as  it  is  termed,  and  relative.  We  say 
of  God,  He  IS  ;  but  we  use  the  same  word  of  a  shadow,  of 
which  the  essence  is  that  there  is  not  light.  The  being  of 
a  shadow  is  only  an  absence,  yet  we  cannot  mark  this  by 
the  words  which  express  existence.  We  cannot  deny  that 
a  shadow  *  exists.'  It  exists  as  a  shadow,  or  has  such  ex- 
istence as  a  shadow  has.  We  say  there  is  darkness,  so 
expressing  negation  or  denial.  This  source  of  error  must 
be  remembered  and  watched  against ;  it  cannot,  in  the 
present  state  of  language,  be  avoided. 

*  It  is  a  rule,'  says  that  great  master  of  discourse,  Lord 
Bacon,  *  that  whatsoever  science  is  not  consonant  to  pre- 
suppositions must  pray  in  aid  of  similitudes.  For  those 
whose  conceptions  are  different  from  popular  opinions 
have  a  double  labor,  the  one  to  make  themselves  conceived, 
and  the  other  to  prove  and  demonstrate  ;  so  that  it  is  of 
necessity  with  them  to  have  recourse  to  similitudes  and 
translations  to  express  themselves.'  The  use,  therefore, 
of  illustrations  and  comparisons  drawn  from  sensuous 
things,  in  the  following  pages,  will  not  be  thought  inap- 
propriate, or  designed  to  snatch  an  assent  from  the  fancy 
which  the  calmer  judgment  should  withhold.     Nor  will 


m 


OF  THE  WOKK   OF  SCIENCE. 


[B.  I. 


I 


C.  I.] 


OF  THE  WOKK  OF  SCIENCE. 


81 


the  points  of  difference  which  must  exist  in  all  similitudes 
from  that  which  they  are  used  to  illustrate  be  held  to  imply 
an  attempt  to  argue  from  one  thing  to  another,  disregard- 
ing the  diversity  of  the  cases.  The  similitudes  are  used  to 
aid  the  conception  of  the  thought. 

2.  That  man  wants  life  may  seem  to  exclude  individual 
responsibility.  Certainly  no  opinion  can  be  true  that  sets 
aside  the  moral  instincts  and  does  violence  to  the  con- 
science. It  may  suffice  here  to  state  that  our  actions,  in 
so  far  as  they  are  our  own,  are  held  to  be  not  necessary, 
and  that  we  are,  therefore,  responsible  for  them.  The 
doctrine  of  man^s  deadness,  so  far  from  diminishing, 
strengthens  and  renders  more  profound  the  sense  of  sin. 

3.  It  may  seem  unnatural  to  speak  of  a  conscious  exist- 
ence in  a  state  of  death.  But  what  is  affirmed  is,  that  a 
sensational  existence,  such  as  ours,  is  not  the  Life  of  Man, 
— that  a  consciousness  of  physical  life  does  itself  imply  a 
deadness.  The  affirmations— that  we  are  living  men,  and 
that  man  has  not  true  and  absolute  Life — are  not  opposed. 
Life  is  a  relative  term.  Our  possession  of  a  conscious 
life  in  relation  to  the  things  that  we  feel  around  us  is  itself 
the  evidence  of  Man's  defect  of  Life  in  a  higher  and  truer 
sense. 

Let  a  similitude  make  the  thought  more  clear.  Are  not 
we,  as  individuals,  at  rest,  steadfast  in  space  ;  evidently  so 
to  our  own  consciousness,  demonstrably  so  in  relation  to 
the  objects  around  us  ?  But  is  man  at  rest  in  space  ?  By 
no  means.  We  are  all  partakers  of  a  motion.  Nay,  if  we 
were  truly  at  rest  we  could  not  have  this  relative  stead- 
fastness, we  should  not  be  at  rest  to  the  things  around  us, 
they  would  fleet  and  slip  away.  Our  relative  rest  and 
consciousness  of  steadfastness  depend  upon  our  bein"-  not 
at  rest.  These  are  moving  things,  to  which  he  can  only 
be  steadfast  who  is  moving  too.     Even  such  is  the  life  of 


( 


« 


» 


which  we  have  consciousness.  We  have  a  life  in  relation 
to  these  physical  things,  because  man  wants  life.  True 
life  in  man  would  alter  his  relation  to  them.  They  could 
not  be  the  realities  any  more,  he  could  not  have  a  life  in 
them.  As  rest  to  moving  things  is  not  truly  rest,  butjno- 
tion,  so  life  to  inert  things  is  not  truly  life,  but  deadness. 

How  should  this  be  otherwise  than  a  familiar  thought 
to  those  who  have  taught  us  that  man,  as  he  now  is,  cannot 
know  the  absolute, — that  he  deals  only  with  phenomena j 
and  not  with  the  very  fact  of  being? 

The  word  phenomenon  has  been  introduced  into  science 
to  denote  that  the  true  essence  of  nature  is  different  from 
that  which  we  can  know  by  sense  or  conceive  by  intellect. 
The  things  which  we  perceive  or  think,  do  not  correspond 
to  the  very  fact  of  being  ;  that  is  unknown.  Phenomena 
are  appearances.* 

But  here  a  difficulty  arises.  For  if  these  things  which 
we  know  be  but  phenomena,  then  do  we  feel  them  wrongly. 
To  us  they  are  the  realities,  they  determine  our  whole  life 
and  condition.  Our  life  is  a  life  in  that  which  is  but  phenom- 
enal. Thus  science  demonstrates  man's  defect.  Our  per- 
ception and  feeling  are  not  true.  We  lie  under  illusions 
which  have  relation  not  to  our  intellect  alone,  but  to  our 
very  being.  We  cannot  separate  them  from  ourselves. 
While  man  is  such  as  he  is,  that  which  can  only  be  appear- 
ance must  be  reality  to  him.  He  feels  himself  in  con- 
scious relation  only  with  that  which  is  not  the  very 
essence,  the  truth  of  things.  Stripped  of  technicality, 
this  is  the  plain  teaching  of  our  science.  It  may  interpret 
to  us  our  secret  discontent,  and  explain  the  wearisome 
failure  of  our  lives. 

It  cannot  be  otherwise  than  that,  if  the  true  essence  of 

*  From  the  Greek,  tjxuvofuu  to  appear. 


i*  I 


OF  THE   WORK  OF  SCIENCE. 


[B.  I. 


nature  be  unknown,  we  should  have  been  compelled  to 
think  it  to  be  such  as  it  is  not.  For  we  cannot  think  there 
is  no  fact  in  nature.  The  reality  impresses  itself  upon  us 
too  strongly.  Nature  is.  It  is  no  illusion  that  we  are  in 
a  real,  actual  world.  So  that  there  has  been  no  escape. 
Compelled  on  the  one  hand  to  be  sure  tliat  the  universe 
■  has  a  true  existence,  and  on  the  other  unable  to  know  that 
to  which  this  true  existence  belongs,  the  issue  has  been 
unavoidable  ;  we  must  have  been  under  illusion,  and  have 
believed  that  to  be  which  is  not.  This  last  fruit  of  inves- 
tigation,— the  discovery  that  man  cannot  know  by  sense  or 
intellect  the  true  '  being'  of  nature, — brings  into  harmony 
all  the  various  thoughts  of  men,  and  shows  to  what  end 
they  have  been  working. 

For  men  could  not  understand  that  this  was  their  true 
relation  to  nature,  until  through  long  and  varied  expe- 
rience the  conviction  had  been  forced  upon  them.  It  is 
natural  to  men  to  suppose,  and  indeed  to  feel  absolutely 
sure,  that  they  do  know  the  true  fact  of  nature,  and  that 
it  is  such  as  it  appears.  That  it  should  be  so  is  indeed 
implied  in  the  meaning  of  the  word  '  appear.'  That  alone 
is  an  appearance  which  men  naturally  suppose  to  be  the 
fact  until  they  have  learnt  otherwise. 

And  the  more  must  it  have  been  difficult  for  men  to 
recognise  this  truth,  because  of  the  bearing  it  has  upon 
themselves ;  for  the  phenomena  that  sense  perceives,  and 
that  science  investigates,  are  the  realities  of  their  life.  If 
they  are  not  truly  the  reality,  then  must  their  own  being 
be  defective  in  a  sense  they  are  not  prepared  to  admit. 
They  are  under  illusion  in  such  a  way  as  must  entirely 
alter  their  own  conception  of  themselves.  The  true  being 
of  man  cannot  be  in  them.  The  true  being  of  nature  is 
hidden  from  our  eyes  because  there  is  not  that  within 
which  answers  to  it. 


\ 


c.  I.] 


OF  THE   WORK  OF  SCIENCE. 


83 


It  is  a  remarkable  thing  that  men  should  have  rested  in 
the  assertion  that  we  cannot  know  the  essential  being  of 
nature,  without  recognising  that  this  fact  necessarily  pkces 
us  under  illusion,  and  causes  us  to  attribute  being  to  that 
which  does  not  possess  it.  We  understand,  however,  why 
they  should  have  failed  to  perceive  this  evident  conse- 
quence of  their  position  when  we  see  what  it  involves. 
That  man  has  not  his  true  life,  must  have  taken  him  long 
to  learn.  All  our  prepossessions,  all  our  natural  convic- 
tions, are  opposed  to  that  belief.  If  these  activities,  these 
powers,  these  capacities  of  enjoyment  and  of  suffering,  this 
consciousness  of  free  will,  this  command  of  the  material 
world,  be  not  life,  what  is  life  ?  What  more  do  we  want 
to  make  us  truly  man  ?  This  is  the  feeling  that  has  held 
men  captive,  and  biassed  all  their  thoughts  so  that  they 
could  not  perceive  what  they  themselves  were  saying. 

Yet  the  sad  undercurrent  has  belied  the  boast.  From 
all  ages  and  all  lands  the  cry  of  anguish,  the  prayer  for 
life  unconscious  of  itself,  has  gone  up  to  heaven.  In 
groans  and  curses,  in  despair  and  cruel  rage,  man  pours 
out  his  secret  to  the  universe :  writing  it  in  blood,  and 
lust,  and  savage  wrong,  on  the  fair  bosom  of  the  earth  ; 
he  alone  not  knowing  what  he  does.  Tf  this  be  the  life  of 
man,  what  is  his  death  ? 

That  the  true  '  being'  of  nature  is  not  inert  rests  on  a 
threefold  argument.  We  feel  that  the  phenomenon  is 
inert,  and  controlled  by  passive  necessity.  The  question 
is,  tlierefore,  whether  this  feeling  on  our  part  corresponds 
to  tlic  truth  of  nature  as  it  is  :  whether  that  which  exists, 
apart  from  man,  be  thus  inert,  or  our  feeling  be  due  to 
man's  own  state  of  being.  In  other  words,  whether  inert- 
ness be  not  one  of  the  respects  in  which  the  phenomenon 
differs  from  the  true  being  of  the  universe. 
2» 


34 


OP  THE   WORK   OP  SCIENCE. 


[B.  I. 


1.  Inertness  necessarily  belongs  to  all  phenomena. 
Ihat  which  is  only  felt  to  be,  and  does  not  truly  or  abso- 
lutely exist,  must  have  the  character  of  inaction.  It  must 
be  felt  as  passive.  A  phenomenon  must  be  inert  because  it 
18  a  phenomenon.  We  cannot  argue  from  inertness  in  that 
which  appears  to  inertness  in  that  which  is.  Of  whatso- 
ever kind  the  very  essence  of  nature  may  be,  if  it  be  un- 
known,  the  phenomenon  must  be  equally  inert.  We  have 
no  ground,  therefore,  in  the  inertness  we  feel,  for  affirming 
of  nature  that  it  is  inert.  We  must  feel  it  so,  by  virtue 
Of  our  known  relation  to  it,  as  not  perceiving  its  essence. 

2.  The  question  therefore  rests  entirely  upon  its  own 
evidence.  Since  we  have  no  reason  from  the  inertness  of 
the  phenomenal'  for  inferring  the  inertness  of  the  '  essen- 
tml,  can  we  know  whether  that  essential  be  inert  or  not? 
We  can  know.  Inertness,  as  being  absolute  inaction,  can 
not  belong  to  that  which  truly  is.  Being  and  absolute  in- 
action  are  contraries.  Inertness,  therefore,  must  be  a  pro- 
perty by  which  the  phenomenal  differs  from  the  essential 
or  absolute. 

3.  Again,  Nature  does  act :  it  acts  upon  us,  or  we  could 
not  perceive  at  all.  The  true  being  of  nature  is  active 
therefore.  That  we  feel  it  otherwise  shows  that  we  do 
not  feel  it  as  it  is.  We  must  look  for  the  source  of  nature's 
apparent  or  felt  inertness  in  man's  condition.  Never 
should  man  have  thought  to  judge  of  nature  without  re- 
membenng  his  own  defectiveness.* 

•  The  perplexity  that  is  always  felt  respecting  perception,  and  man's  con- 
»e|0U8  relation  to  the  physi«U  world,  whenever  the  question  is  agitate^ 
anses  m  ^t  part  from  the  incongnious  supposition  that  ,>,.arr.^ 
upon  us.  It  is  evident  that  in  whatever  world  man  might  be  ^TJJte^^t 
-C.OU.  on W^ W«.,  that  i,  if  he  did  not  pe^eive  the^ft^i  LTng   f 

lit  iTl1"°"""  ''  '^"^^  ^  -  ^^^  --^^-  ^^t  condition  ^e J 
with  It  the  conscious  perception  of  inertness  unavoidably.  We  may  noT 
therefore,  assume  any  other  cause  for  our  perception  of  naL  as  inert       ^ 


C.  I.] 


OF  THE   WORK  OF  SCIENCE. 


35 


\' 


I 


What  can  be  more  simple  than  that  our  own  state  should 
affect  our  feeling,  and  have  necessitated  our  thinking  of 
the  world  as  it  is  not  ?  Universally  the  principle  is  recog- 
nised in  respect  to  individual  things,  that  our  own  condi- 
tion affects  our  feeling,  and  that  we  must  have  regard  to 
that  condition  as  an  element  in  judging.  The  application 
of  this  principle  to  the  investigation  of  the  world  as  a 
whole,  and  to  conditions  affecting  all  mankind,  is  all  that 
is  contended  for.  Before  we  can  know  by  our  feeling  of 
the  world  what  it  truly  is,  we  must  understand  man's  con- 
dition in  relation  to  it.f 

Here  is  the  especial  work  of  Science.  By  investigation 
of  that  which  he  feels  to  be,  man  learns  his  own  condition 
and  becomes  able  to  interpret  the  appearance  of  the  world! 
This  is  its  end  and  use,  the  part  which  it  plays  in  the 
great  work  of  human  life.  For  men,  pursuing  their  own 
ends,  fulfil  God's.  All  human  activity  bears  witness  to  a 
larger  purpose  in  it  than  any  that  is  consciously  present 
to  the  worker  ;  often  the  object  sought  being  of  little 
value  compared  with  the  result  that  is  achieved. 

For  many  generations,  now,  the  chief  energies  of  think- 
mg  men  have  been  devoted  to  physical  research.  Un- 
wearied has  been  the  diligence,  patient  and  self-sacrificing 
the  toil,  that  have  been  brought  to  the  task ;  glorious  the 
offerings  of  self-denial,  enthusiasm,  life,  that  have  been 
laid  upon  that  altar.  The  results  may  look  cold,  barely 
set  forth  by  weight  and  measure,  or  clothed  in  uncouth 
formulas,  but  a  warm  life  glows  beneath.  The  dark  crater 
IS  instinct  with  fire.  For  those  results  the  largest  hearts 
of  human  mould  have  poured  themselves  in  passionate 
fervor  upon  nature,  and  ecstasies  of  joy  and  hope  have 

t  Guarding  against  what  Bacon  calls,  'the  Idols  of  the  tribe;'  or  those 
errors  respecting  nature  to  which  we  are  prone  through  circumstances 
which  affect  all  men. 


t 


36 


OF  THE   WORK   OF  SCIENCE. 


[B.  I. 


thrilled  to  weakness  frames  which  no  labors  could  ex- 
haust ;  for  God  had  moved  them.  The  wonder  of  His 
works  was  as  a  spell  upon  them  ;  the  mystery  and  beauty 
of  the  universe  wrought  like  a  command  within.  They 
stretched  forth  their  hands  unto  the  Infinite. 

And  what  have  they  grasped?  Some  mathematical 
relations,  some  undefined  ideas  about  forces— a  perception 
merely  of  undeviating  law?  Have  they  but  inaugurated 
a  ceaseless  strife  between  the  emotions  and  the  intellect— 
an  everlasting  protest  of  piety  against  conviction  ?  Must 
they  content  themselves  with  physical  advance,  and  take 
refuge  from  perplexity  of  heart  in  bridging  oceans  and 
annihilating  space,  the  bright  visions  which  lured  them 
on  fading  like  the  enchantments  of  a  dream  ?  Is  this  the 
end? 

Not  so.     In  creating  science  men  have  done  more  than 
they  knew.      They   have  prepared   tlie  way  for  the  re- 
moval of  an  illusion.     Hence  tlie  discord.    For  the  truths 
of  science  will  not  blend  with  the  conceptions  we  have 
formed  of  nature  without  a  shock  to  ineradicable   eclings. 
The  great  thought  of  science  is  necessity  ;  the  human  soul 
demands  above  all  things  freedom,  not  only  for  itself  but 
even  more  for  the  Power  by  wliich  the  world  is  governed. 
Therefore  it  is  that  science  and  religion  have  been  at 
strife.     Our  conception  of  naiture  as  inert  would  not  per- 
mit it  to  be  otherwise.    The  establishment  of  a  necessary 
connection  between  natural  phenomena  has  seemed  to  put 
a  chain  upon  the  hand  of  God,   and  substitute   a  dead 
mechanism  for  the  living  sympathy  that  men  had  found 
in  wave  and  mountain,  in  storm  and  sunshine,  in  the  beauty 
of  the  earth  and  glory  of  the  sky,    The  present  state  of 
science  in  the  minds  of  religious  men  is,  for  the  most  part, 
a  result  of  opposing  forces,  a  compromise  between  the 
ideas  of  physical  causation  and  of  tlie  direct  action  of  the 


I 


c.  I.] 


OF  THE  WORK   OF  SCIENCE. 


37 


I 


Creator.  But  it  need  not  continue  so.  This  is  an  em- 
barrassment which  arises  in  the  course  of  advancing  knowl- 
edge, but  whicli  ceases  with  the  misapprehension  from 
which  it  springs.  The  work  of  science  is  to  rectify  our 
thought  of  nature  ;  to  show  us  that  the  deadness  we  per- 
ceive is  but  our  own.  Here  is  the  reward  of  all  that 
patient  toil ;  the  rightful  fruit  of  that  prolonged  investi- 
gation. The  explanation  of  the  universe  which  ignorance 
has  supposed  yields  to  a  juster  knowledge  :  there  is  not  a 
defect  in  nature,  but  a  want  of  life  in  man. 

For  men  have  naturally  believed  that  the  sole  result  of 
Science  would  be  to  enlarge  our  knowledge  of  that  which 
appears  ;  to  discover  the  relations  of  phenomena,  and  give 
us  control  over  physical  things.  But  Science  has  an  evi- 
dent adaptation  to  do  more  than  this  ;  to  make  us  know 
ourselves  more  truly,  to  reveal  to  us  not  only  that  which 
is  without,  but  that  whicli  is  within.  Thus  it  places  us  in 
an  altogether  different  attitude  in  respect  to  our  knowledge 
of  nature,  enabling  us  to  attribute  to  its  true  source  the 
defect  we  feel. 

There  are  three  words  in  established  use  :  appearance, 
phenomenon,  and/ac^.  Between  appearances  and  facts  there 
is  the  widest  distinction,  they  are  even  opposites.  Yet  the 
word  phenomenon  is  used  sometimes  for  one,  sometimes  for 
the  other.  Confusion  of  thought  must  result  from  such  a 
use  of  words  ;  for  things  that  are  equal  to  the  same  ought 
to  be  equal  to  one  another.*  But  the  reason  of  this  vacil- 
lating language  is,  that  while  men  arecompelled  to  say  that 
phenomena  are  but  appearances,  they  do  truly  think  of 
them  as  facts  or  realities  ;  for  they  are  felt  by  us  as  real. 


*  Coleridge  notices  '  the  unconscious  irony  with  which  the  same  things 
are  termed  indifferently  facts  and  phenomena.' 


38 


OF  THE  WORK  OF  SCIENCE. 


[B.  I. 


We  speak  of  things  in  one  way  and  think  of  them  in 
another,  for  we  can  only  truly  think  of  phenomena  as  but 
phenomena,  by  constantly  remembering  man's  want  of  life. 
But  the  right  use  of  these  words  is  distinct  and  simple. 
Appearance  is  that  which  is  to  our  sense,  but  is  not  true  to 
our  thought ;  e.g.  the  appearance  of  the  moon  is  a  bright 
disc.    Phenomena  is  that  which  is  to  our  thought  corrected 
and  checked  by  our  senses  ;  the  moon  itself  therefore  is  a 
phenomenon  :  it  is  that  which  we  can  think.     Fact  is  that 
which  truly  and  absolutely  exists  ;  the  essential  being  of 
nature  which  we  cannot  think.    Fact  is  that  which  is  : 
Phenomena  is  that  which  is  to  our  conception  :  Appearance 
is  that  which  is  to  our  sense.    Defect  of  knowledge  makes 
appearances  facts  tons  ;  defect  of  being  makes  phenomena 
facts  to  us.     In  the  true  life  of  man,  the  fact  alone  should 
be  the  fact  to  him,  and  phenomena  should  be  but  phenome- 
na, instead  of  being,  as  now,  the  realities  of  his  existence  : 
even  as  true  knowledge  is  to  know  and  feel  appearances 
to  be  but  appearances,  instead  of  their  being,  as  they  are 
to  ignorance,  realities.    Now  the  phenomenon  is  real  to 
us,  moulds  and  determines  all  our  experience.    We  express 
this  fact  by  saying  we  are  the  slaves  of  matter.     The  dis- 
cordance of  our  state  with  the  aspirations  and  unquench- 
able assertions  of  our  soul  is  felt,  but  not  understood.    It 
is  want  of  life  in  man,  under  which  we  labor,  that  makes 
the  universe  physical  to  us,  and  subjects  us  to  the  tyranny 
of  inert  necessities.    For  nature  is  not  as  we  feel  it.    Thus 
do  we  perceive  and  feel  another  different  fact,  thus  to  feel 
it  not  for  ever.    Life  is  to  be  given  to  man,  a  life  whereby, 
being  more,  he  shall  feel  more  truly.     The  instincts  whicli 
assert  for  man  a  truer,  worthier  being  may  assume  a  loftier 
tone.     Science  is  their  friend  and  servant,  not  their  enemy; 
revealing  deadness  in  respect  to  man,  it  explains   the 
mystery  of  his  present  state,  adds  emphasis  to  the  prophecy 


i 


! 
I 


0.  I.] 


OP  THE   WOPwK   OF  SCIENCE. 


S9 


of  a  different  future.  Man  shall  be  made  alive  ;  altered 
not  in  his  circumstances,  but  in  himself.  The  physical 
testifies  of  the  spiritual  ;  the  dead  defective  world,  of 
which  we  are  conscious,  tells  us  of  man,  of  his  deadness, 
of  his  need  to  be  made  more.  *  Signal  the  happiness  of 
humanity  to  be  environed  with  an  imagery  so  resplendent; 
but  happier  still,  that  amid  the  weakness,  the  very  ashes 
of  our  being,  the  power  remains  to  apprehend  that  imagery 
as  a  symbol.'* 

o  Nichols'  Architecture  qf  the  ffeavens. 


-^;, 


CHAPTER    II. 

OP   THB  LAWS   OP   NATUEE. 

These  three  be  the  trae  stages  of  knowledge,  and  they  are  as  the  three  acctamatlons 
Soncte,  Sancte,  Sancte  !  holy  in  the  description  or  dilatation  of  his  works  :  holy  in  the  con- 
nection or  concatenation  of  them  ;  and  holy  in  the  union  of  them  in  a  perpetual  and  uni- 
form law. 

Lord  Baoox  :  QT  the  Advancement  (f  Learning. 

With  true  action  we  necessarily  connect  moral  concep- 
tions.   The  ideas  cannot  be  dissociated.    And  that  to  which 
moral  conceptions  apply  is  by  all  termed  spiritual.     For 
tliis  reason  the  fact  of  nature  has  been  affirmed  to  be  the 
spiritual  world.     That  it  is  so,  follows  from  the  proposi- 
tion that  inertness  does  not  belong  to  it.    The  argument 
would  be  the  same,  if  there  were  insuperable  difficulties  in 
conceiving  how  man  should  be  made  to  perceive  the  inert 
phenomenal  world  by  his  presence,  in  a  defective  state,  in 
the  spiritual  world.    The  proof  that  it  must  be  so  would 
be  none  the  less  complete.    But  this  is  by  no  means  the 
ease.     On  the  contrary,  the  light  which  the  facts  of  our 
experience  receive  from  the  perception  that  it  is  truly  a 
spiritual  world  with  which  we  are  in  relation,  and  that  it 
is  physical  to  us  only  through  man's  defectiveness— that  its 
being  physical  to  us  denotes,  and  is  evidence  of,  a  dead 
state  of  man,  which  else  we  should  not  know— is  stronger 
demonstration   than   any  that  rests  merely  on  the  intel- 
lect.   For  this  evidence  embraces  all  our  faculties,  and 
appeals  to  all  our  being ;  revealing  the  source  of  our  in- 

[40] 


I 


'i 


C.  II.] 


OF  THE   LAWS  OF   NATURE. 


41 


ward  strife,  and  taking  away  perplexities  by  demonstrat- 
ing how  they  must  have  arisen. 

For  so  we  understand  why  we  are  in  a  physical  world : 
why,  although  conscious  of  adaptation  (or  thinking  our- 
selves so)  to  a  different  mode  of  being,  we  are  so  sur- 
rounded and  hemmed  in,  subjected  to  passions  and  neces- 
sities due  to  physical  laws.  We  are  thus  because  man 
wants  life.  A  defect  having  its  seat  in  him  is  thus  felt  ex- 
ternally, and  seems  to  constrain  him  from  without. 

And  thus,  too,  it  is  that  we  have  conceived  two  modes 
of  being  :  one  low,  inert,  passing  :  the  other  higher,  free, 
eternal.     This  is  because  man  has  believed  the  phenomenal 
to  have  true  existence,  believing  his  own  deadness  to  be,  as 
he  perceives  it,  in  that  which  is  around  him.     But  that  our 
experience  is  truly  due  to  a  spiritual  fact,  altered  to  us  by 
man's  defect,  speaks  for  itself.     We  feel  that  we  are  in  re- 
lation with  a  world  that  is  not  inert  or  dead.     Science,  in 
presenting  nature  as  inert,  crushes  our  instincts,  baffles  our 
deepest  convictions.     Man  we  would  willingly  grant  to  be 
in  a  dead,  lifeless  state  ;  but  not  the  universe.     It  is  too 
full  of  glory  and  of  beauty— a  beauty  that  is  to  us  sacred, 
that  we  cannot  but  call  holy.     Nature  is  bound  to  us  by 
ties  so  deep  and  tender,  it  is  so  high  above  us,  stirs  us  with 
influences  so  mysterious,  speaks  to  us  in  words  so  moving, 
sympathizes  with  us  so  truly,  chides  us  so  gently,  so  fer- 
vently inspires,  or  sternly  warns,  holds  out  to  us  for  ever 
so  bright  a  pattern,  it  cannot  be  the  slave  of  a  mere  dead 
necessity.     It  seems  a  ruthless  hand  that  tears  away  so 
bright  a  veil,  and  shows  us— not  nothing,  not  a  dream,  but 
a  dead  block,  worse  than  nothing  ;  a  cold  carved  image 
with  unheeding  eyes,  on  which  we  lavish  love  in  vain  ; 
which  stamps  the  life  out  of  our  hearts,  like  idol  gods,  by 
blind  mechanic  impulse,  and  no  more. 

Therefore  it  is  that  so  many  men  of  strong  affections  and 


42 


OF  THE  LAWS  OF  NATURE. 


[B.  I. 


imagination  oppose  themselves  to  science.  They  cannot 
bear  to  have  all  this  glory  and  significance  reduced  to  mere 
results  of  physical  conditions.  All  that  for  which  they 
value  nature  is  destroyed  in  such  explanations.  They 
loathe  to  think  that  the  tenderness  and  awe  which  move 
them  so  are  but  subjective  enchantments. 

They  say,  that  science  does  not  account  for  that  which 
they  perceive  :  like  the  knife  of  the  anatomist,  it  pursues 
the  life  in  vain.  For  to  this  clear  issue  the  case  is  brought, 
man  does  introduce  inio  nature  something  from  himself; 
either  the  inertness,  the  negative  quality,  the  defect ;  or 
the  beauty,  the  meaning,  and  the  glory.  Either  that 
whereby  the  world  is  noble  comes  from  ourselves,  or  that 
whereby  it  is  mean  ;  that  which  it  has,  or  that  which  it 
wants.     Can  it  be  doubtful  which  it  is  ? 

The  course  of  nature  is  constant  and  unvarying,  and  this 
is  the  ground  upon  which  its  inertness  is  affirmed.     For 
this  reason,  together  with  our  own  consciousness  of  exer- 
tion when  we  would  produce  physical  changes,  we  assert 
the  inactivity  of  nature.     If  the  plienomena  were  con- 
formed to  no  laws  that  we  could  trace,  we  should  admit 
nature  to  be  active.    But  it  is  evident  that  invariableness 
is  not  proof  of  inaction.    Right  action  is  invariable  ; 
RIGHT  ACTION  is  absolutely  conformed  to  law.     Why,  there- 
fore, should  not  the  secret  of  nature's  invariableness  be, 
not  passiveness,  but  rightness  ?     Rightness  of  action,  being 
ever  one,  absolutely  unchanging  except  in  form,  would  ap- 
pear, if  not  understood,  as  an  inert  necessity.     If  invaria- 
bleness implied  passiveness,  then  God  himself  must  be  inert, 
who  changes  not.     Man's  deadness  and  disharmony  from 
nature,  which  cause  him  to  be  variable,  self-indulgent,  and 
a  transgressor  of  law,  make  him  believe  the  fulfilling  of 
law,  which  he  everywhere  perceives  around  him,  to  be  a 
dead  necessity. 


I 


I 


C.  II.] 


OF  THE   LAWS  OF  NATURE. 


43 


Action  and  necessity  in  one  :  this  is  the  fact  of  nature's 
undeviating  laws— right  action,  which  is  necessary  where 
love  is.*  The  fact  of  love  becomes  the  phenomenon  to  us 
of  an  inert  necessity.  For  love  is  the  true  necessity  of  na- 
ture ;  the  necessity  by  want  of  which  in  us  comes  all  our 
misery  :  by  want  of  love  we  know  not  love  in  that  which 
is  around  us.  If  that  moral  life,  which  makes  action  neces- 
sary, had  been  in  man,  never  would  he  have  inferred  inac- 
tion from  the  necessity  of  nature  :  never  have  supposed  a 
deadness  from  the  very  proof  of  life. 

What  joy  it  were  to  know,  in  the  unchanging  laws,  in 
the  ever  more  widely  revealed  necessity,  of  nature,  the  fact 
of  holiness  I  And  the  proof  is  evident.  For  the  fact  of 
nature  cannot  be  inert.  And  if  there  be  not  inert  neces- 
sity, why  the  uniformity  ?    The  question  admits  but  one 


*  It  might  be  asked,  '  Can  holiness  be  predicated  of  nature  as  of  man  ? 
TnvariabUity  in  the  watch  I  make,  is  different  from  invariability  in  the  child  I 
educate.  The  child  has  a  will  and  freedom,  and  his  right  action  I  call  holi- 
ness ;  but  unless  the  watch  has  also  a  will  and  freedom,  I  should  not  call  its 
right  action  holiness.' 

It  is  not  the  phenomenon  that  is  spoken  ofj  but  that  true  being,  itself  un- 
perceived,  which  causes  the  phenomenon  to  be  perceived  by  us.  The  phe- 
nomenon is  inert,  and  therefore  not  possibly  holy ;  but  we  speak  of  the  es- 
sential fact,  which  is  different  therefrom  and  not  inert.  Of  this,  holiness  is 
aflfirmed,  because  the  phenomenon  is  uniform.  The  uniformity  in  that  which 
we  feel  to  be  (by  virtue  of  which  alone  we  can  construct  a  watch),  depends 
on  right  action,  and  not  on  inaction  in  that  which  is. 

To  take  an  illustration.  If  when  we  look  through  a  stereoscope  it  is  said 
to  us  that  the  object  is  double,  we  might  reply  in  the  same  way,  '  How  can 
tliat  which  I  see  be  said  to  be  double?  it  is  single.'  True;  it  is  not  that 
which  is  consciously  present  to  our  perception  that  is  spoken  o^  but  the  ob- 
ject which  causes  us  to  have  such  perception,  and  to  think  aright  of  which 
we  nmst  remember  the  subjective  laws  of  vision.  We  correct  our  percep- 
tion, as  it  were,  by  withdrawing  our  eye  from  the  stereoscope.  So  we  must 
mentally  withdraw  our  eye  to  judge  of  the  true  reality  of  nature.  Not  of 
that  which  is  consciously  present  to  our  perception,  but  of  that  which  truly 
is.  wo  want  to  learn. 


44 


OF  THE   LAWS  OF  NATURE. 


[B.  I. 


I 


answer.  That  uniformity  is  Tightness.  Rightness  must 
be  uniform.  Remembering  our  conscious  want,  our  known 
defectiveness,  all  is  clear.  Deadness  can  no  more  be 
believed  in  nature.  The  universe  rises  to  its  true  level 
in  our  regard.  A  grandeur,  awfulness,  and  joy  unspeak- 
able, clothe  all  our  life.  It  is  a  sacred  thing  to  live.  The 
secret  stirrings  and  heavings  of  our  hearts,  the  throbbing 
passions,  the  awful  questionings,  the  baffled  strife  to  pene- 
trate the  breathing  mystery  around  us :  all  are  seen.  The 
dead  humanity  embraced  in  universal  life. 

That  the  invariableness  of  nature  bespeaks  holiness  as 
its  cause,  doubtless  involves  an  appeal  to  man's  moral 
sense.     If  he  were  merely  an  intellectual  being,  there 
could  be  no  such  argument.     But  the  appeal  to  an  inevi- 
table conscious  association  of  riglit  and  wrong  with  true 
action,  the  moral  distinctions  drawn  by  all,  surely  has  not 
less  weight  than  an  appeal  to  a  perception  of  intellectual 
relations.    The  latter  is  as  much  a  matter  of  consciousness 
as  the  former.    There  is  the  same  necessity  of  belief  in  the 
one  case  as  in  the  other.    It  is  affirmed  that  the  laws  of 
our  nature  demand,  that  if  we  banish  inertness  from  our 
thought  of  nature,  we  should  introduce  into  it  the  idea  of 
rightness.     There  must  be  reason  for  the  invariableness 
of  the  phenomena.     We  are  bound  by  our  constitution  to 
attribute  rightness  to  nature  if  it  be  not  inert. 

There  is  no  inert  necessity.  That  only  appears,  or  is 
felt  by  us  ;  it  is  the  phenomenon  of  a  different  fact.  It  is 
easy  to  understand  how  man's  condition  should  be  such  that 
he  should  necessarily  have  conceived  unvarying  actiox  as 
inert  necessity.  It  needs  only  that  he  should  not  perceive 
the  action.*     Where  there  is  true  action,  not  recognised, 


•  That  is,  indeed,  only  that  the  essential  being  of  nature  should  be 
unknown. 


s 


C.  II.] 


OF  THE  LAWS  OF  NATURE. 


45 


i 


* 


J 


there  passive  causes  must  be  supposed.     Conceive  some 
being,  ignorant  of  man,  ignorant  of  his  spontaneous  power 
of  motion :  he  would  necessarily  suppose,  on  observing 
human  movements,  that  some  force  operated  upon  man 
from  without,  to  produce  them.     And  if  they  were  always 
the  same  under  the  same  circumstances,  if  they  were  con- 
formed to  unvarying  principles,  to  such  a  being  there 
would  be,  in  human  motions,  just  the  uniformity  we  per- 
ceive in  nature,  just  such  an  appearance  of  passive  law. 
We  conceive  of  force  as  existing  apart  from  us  only  by 
virtue  of  our  own  consciousness.     We  feel  force  ;  it  is  the 
phenomenon.     The  idea  of  passive  forces  in  nature  is  an 
inference  solely  from  our  own  sensations,  and  it  is  a  mis- 
taken one.     Force  implies  difficulty,  inability  ;  not  to  say 
physical  sensation  like  our  own.    In  nature  is  an  absolute, 
unchanging  oneness  of  fact  in  ever-changing  form.     These 
changes  of  form  impress  us  with  the  feeling  of  force  or 
exertion,  when  taking  place  in  certain  relations  to  our 
consciousness.    Force  is  subjective.    As  well  might  we 
suppose  pain  in  nature,  as  that  passive  force  which  we 
imagine.     A  similar  error  we  have  already  escaped  from 
in  respect  to  the  sensations  of  light  or  sound.   Our  natural 
impression  is,  that  the  light  we  perceive  exists  externally  ; 
but  we  have  learnt  to  recognise  a  different  cause  for  our 
perception.     We  suppose  ourselves  to  be  such  that  an 
external  motion  impresses  us  with  a  sensation  of  luminous- 
ness.    Wc  are  such  that  the  action  which  is  in  nature 
impresses  us  with  the  feeling  of  passive  force. 

Thus  the  various  forces  which  science  supposes,  as  pro- 
ducing the  phenomena  of  nature,  are  easily  understood. 
They  are  conceptions  necessary  for  us.  They  belong  to 
the  phenomenon.  Science  does  not  affirm  them  as  existing, 
only  as  apparent.  Taking  to  herself  the  position  of  deal- 
ing only  with  phenomena,  she  assigns  to  these  forces  also 


4<) 


OF  THE   LAWS  OF  NATURE. 


[B.  I. 


but  a  phenomenal  character.  The  fact  of  nature  is  felt  by 
us  as  a  passive  existence,  subject  to  these  various  forces, 
because  we  are  defective,  and  do  not  feel  it  rightly.  The 
passive  forces  have  been  necessarily  supposed,  because 
there  cannot  be  true  action  in  that  which  is  but  a  phe- 
nomenon.* 

So  man's  existence  in  relation  with  being  that  is  truly 
active,  the  fact  or  essence  of  it  being  unknown  or  unper- 
ceived,  would  necessarily  cause  him  to  perceive  such  inert 
uniformity  as  he  does.  The  inertness  of  nature  to  our 
feeling  rests  only  on  our  not  consciously  perceiving  it  as 
it  is.  And  our  feeling  nature  as  inert  involves  our  con- 
sciousness of  exertion,  involves  our  conscious  activity  in 
respect  to  physical  things.  Our  feelings  in  respect  to  the 
world,  as  passive,  necessarily  flow  out  of  its  being  but 
phenomenal.  In  feeling  the  phenomenal  as  real,  our  ex- 
perience must  be  such  as  it  is.  Consciousness  of  exertion 
is  inseparable  from  perception  of  inertness  in  nature. 


<»  Because  that  which  is  a  phenomenon  cannot  exist.    It  has  a  relative 
existence  only;  it  'is  to  us,'  i.  c,  it  is  felt  by  us  as  existing;  that  which 
truly  exists  being  different     Of  course,  therefore,  there  cannot  be  action  in 
a  phenomenon,  there  not  being  existence.    It  is  of  necessity  characterized 
by  inertness.     It  has  relative  or  apparent  action,  but  is  in  itself  and  abso- 
lutely inactive.    To  say  that  the  phenomenon  is  different  from  that  which 
truly  is,  and  to  say  that  it  does  not  exist,  are  exactly  the  same  thing.    The 
iact  exists,  and  the  phenomena  is  felt  by  us  to  exist,  because  of  the  existence 
of  that  fact.     Thus  it  is  easy  to  understand  how  an  inert  existence  has  been 
supposed.   The  idea  is  self-contradictory,  yet  it  must  have  arisen.   Ignorance 
necessitates  belief  in  the  existence  of  that  which  only  is  to  us,  t.  «.,  of  the 
phenomenon.     But  the  phenomenon  is  found  to  be  inert,  before  it  is  recog- 
nised to  be  only  a  phenomenon.     It  is  found  to  be  inert  while  it  is  stUl 
supposed  to  BE.    Thus  the  notion  of  inert  existence  comes  to  be  entertained, 
and  grows  famihar  insidiously,  so  that  its  impossibility  is  overlooked;  and 
men  who  maintain  that  the  things  that  are  to  us  are  but  phenomena,  and  do 
not  truly  exist,  still  regard  the  fact  of  nature,  which  does  exist,  virtually  as 
inert. 


I 


.'if 


C.  II.] 


OF  THE  LAWS  OF  NATURE. 


47 


So  far  we  may  see  clearly.  That  which  we  feel  to  be  is 
inert,  because  it  is  not  the  very  essence  of  that  which  is ; 
and  the  tracing  of  absolute  invariableness  and  necessity 
throughout  all  nature  presents  to  us  a  wholly  different 
aspect.  It  no  more  makes  the  fact  of  nature  passive,  no 
more  sets  aside  the  life.  Science  has  a  new  attitude  to 
the  moral  sense.  We  rejoice  to  trace  necessity  in  the 
phenomenon,  for  that  is  love  and  holiness  in  the  fact.  To 
be  able  to  refer  all  things  in  nature  to  invariable  laws,  to 
see  how  everything  must  necessarily  be  ;  this  would  be  the 
glory  and  the  joy  of  man.  This  would  be  to  demonstrate 
in  nature  undeviating  holiness,  perfect  and  unfailing  love. 
Take  away  the  inertness,  understand  that  it  is  due  to  man, 
and  the  reducing  all  things  to  an  apparently  mechanical 
necessity  revolts  the  soul  no  more.  The  necessity  is  no 
more  mechanical. 

The  investigation  of  phenomena  does  reduce  them  all 
within  the  sphere  of  merely  passive  laws.  Form  only 
changes,  and  every  change  confesses  a  necessity.  Nor  does 
the  evidence  of  this  fact  demand  that  all  particulars  should 
be  discussed.  It  has  demonstration  in  the  nature  of  the 
case.  Force  cannot  otherwise  exist  than  under  the  control 
of  such  passive  necessity.  It  is  its  nature,  part  of  its  defi- 
nition, that  it  is  determined  by  resistance.  Force  and  re- 
sistance are  correlative.  All  natural  processes,  considered 
in  respect  to  force,  resolve  themselves  into  a  passive  neces- 
sity. Of  all  things,  as  the  fact  is  one,  one  also  is  the  ap- 
pearance ;  force  obeying  necessary  laws.  Passive  change 
under  equally  passive  resistance  or  control.* 

This  is  the  phenomenon  whereof  the  fact  is  holiness. 
Nature  is  holy,  not  in  figure,  not  in  seeming.     In  deed  and 

*  For  a  further  reference  to  this  point,  see  Book  V.,  Dial.  iii. 


If 


III 


=  !l 


48 


OF  THE   LAW3  OF  NATL'RK. 


[B.  I. 


truth  the  fact  of  nature's  life  is  holiness  ;  the  seeming  is 
necessary  passiveuess.  This  is  the  distinction  of  the  phe- 
nomenon from  the  true  and  essential  fact,  that  the  being 
and  therewith  the  action  is  wanting.  This  world  is  the 
spiritual  world,  not  known.  To  be  as  we  are,  is  to  be  in 
the  world  that  truly  is,  but  blind  and  unperceiving,  and  to 
have  our  life,  therefore,  in  a  world  of  mere  phenomena, 
which  is  not.  Thus  to  live  is  to  be  under  illusion,  and 
spend  our  days  as  a  dream.  This  is  the  unreality,  the  un- 
substantialness  of  this  world,  which  men's  inmost  hearts 
aflSrm,  which  has  so  often  found  for  itself  a  voice.  The 
world  is  an  illusion,  a  dream,  a  mockery.  Life  deceives 
us,  its  promises  are  lies  ;  it  yields  no  satisfaction,  only 
hope  and  desire  incessantly  renewed,  a  thirst  never  slaked. 
That  is  true.  The  phenomenon  must  be  unreal  and  if  we 
think  it  to  be  the  true  reality,  then  we  are  dealing  with  an 
unreal  world  ;  a  world  that  to  be  known  aright  should  be 
to  us  but  a  sign  of  other  and  higher  being,  that  cannot  dis- 
appoint. 

Because  nature  is  spiritual,  science  has  been  compelled 
to  introduce  the  conception  of  law.  Incongruous  as  it  is 
with  our  thought  of  an  inert  substance,  it  has  been  felt  to 
be  not  less  natural  and  true  to  instinct  than  indispensable 
for  theory,  xlnd  rightly.  In  nature  law  is  fulfilled.  Per- 
fect obedience  is  there.     For  the  fulfilling  of  law  is  love. 

Well  may  nature  bind  us  with  so  mysterious  a  charm, 
and  thrill  us  with  a  potency  so  magical.  That  Rightness 
constitutes  the  deep  secret  of  her  being,  binds  her  infinitely 
close  to  us,  makes  her  truly  ours.  No  other  tie  could  con- 
stitute so  true  a  union.  For  rightness  is  the  deep  secret 
of  our  being  also.  In  spite  of  the  evil  of  our  nature,  in 
spite  of  daily  and  hourly  sin,  the  strongest  passion  of  hu- 
manity is  the  love  of  right.  Alienated  from  rectitude, 
man  is  at  war  with  his  own  life.    Thence  comes  our  woe, 


I 

* 

I 


n 


*f 


I 


C.  II.] 


OF  THE   LAWS  OF  NATUEE. 


49 


our  misery,  our  sense  of  loss ;  being  wrong-doers  we  are 
alienated  from  our  true  and  only  home.  Because  she  is 
right,  nature  is  ours  :  more  truly  ours  than  we  ourselves. 
We  turn  from  the  inward  ruin  to  the  outward  glory,  and 
marvel  at  the  contrast.  But  we  need  not  marvel ;  it  is 
the  difference  of  life  and  death  ;  piercing  the  dimness  even 
of  man's  darkened  sense,  jarring  upon  his  fond  illusion  like 
waking  realities  upon  a  dream.  Without  is  living  holi- 
ness, within  is  deathly  wrong. 

a 


I\ 


\    ' 


CHAPTER    III. 

OP  THE  ILLUSTRATION  FEOM  ASTKONOMT. 

Caiuclkb.— I  know  not  how  it  is,  Socrates,  you  appear  to  me  to  speak  well.  Yet  that 
which  happens  to  most,  happens  to  me  ;  I  am  not  quite  persuaded  by  you. — Plato  : 
Gorffias. 

The  difficulty  which  is  naturally  felt  in  conceiving  that  the 
fact  which  causes  our  experience  is  spiritual  may  be  much 
diminished  by  the  aid  of  analogy.  Not  that  analogy  fur- 
nishes any  part  of  the  evidence  on  which  the  statement 
rests.  That  evidence  claims  to  have  a  demonstrative  basis 
in  science,  which  demands  tliat  we  should  ascribe  the  per- 
ceived inertness  to  man,  and  recognise  that  the  inert  phe- 
nomenon denotes  a  fact  that  cannot  be  inert.  But  how- 
ever sufficient  these  or  any  other  proofs  might  be  granted 
to  be,  there  still  remains  a  difficulty  in  respect  to  the  feel- 
ing, a  strangeness,  and  as  it  were  an  unnaturalness,  that 
has  its  seat  chiefly  in  the  sense,  and  which  might  express 
itself  in  such  terms  as  these : '  What  does  it  avail  to  prove 
the  world  not  physical  ?  of  what  use  is  it  to  bring  argu- 
ments that  these  things  which  I  see  and  handle,  which  I 
use  for  food  or  clothing,  which  are  passive  before  my  touch, 
are  spiritual  ?  I  know  that  they  are  not.  This  is  the 
world  in  which  I  am,  and  it  is  unspiritual  enough.'  All 
must  be  subject  for  a  time  to  this  feeling  :  it  is  chiefly  the 
result  of  habit,  and  soon  ceases  to  cause  any  embarrass- 
ment.   It  miglit  be  sufficient  to  reply  that  these  things  are 

[50] 


i^ 


C.  III.]  litLUSTHATIOX   FKOM  ASTRONOMY. 


51 


the  2^fi€noniena,  the  physicalness  of  which  is  not  denied, 
but  affirmed,  and  the  reality  of  which  to  us  is  the  very  evi- 
dence of  the  want  of  life  of  man  :  their  not  being  felt  by 
us  to  be,  as  they  are,  the  appearances  of  a  different  reality, 
showing  man's  defectiveness.     It  might  be  urged  that  no 
one  leads  so  natural  and  common-sense  a  life,  as  he  who 
best  knows  that  he  is  living  face  to  face  with  eternity  and 
all  spiritual  things,  and  that  a  rectification  of  his  own  con- 
dition would  make  him  feel  himself  to  be  so.    It  needs 
only  a  liberation  from  the  chains  forged  by  speculation 
and  hypothesis,  to  make  it  most  easy  to  us  to  recognise  in 
all  our  consciousness  a  spiritual  cause,  and  a  deadness  in 
ourselves.     But  assistance  in  overcoming  the  natural  feel- 
ing, which  makes  this  conviction  difficult  to  acquire  against 
our  preconceptions,  may  be  derived  from  the  course  of 
man's  thought  upon  other  subjects,  and  especially  from  the 
history  of  astronomy.     Remembering  that  in  the  one  case 
the  intellectual  apprehension  alone  is  concerned,  and  in  the 
other  the  actual  being  of  man,  the  progress  of  astronomi- 
cal discovery  may  serve  to  illustrate,  in  almost  every  de- 
tail, the  course  of  man's  learning  that  nature  is  spiritual, 
and  that  he  wants  life.     We  feel  it  absurd  to  be  told  that 
this  is  the  spiritual  world.    According  to  all  that  we  be- 
lieve it  is  certainly  not  so.     But  we  believe  that  the  starry 
universe  is  infinite,  or  at  least  inconceivably  vast  in  its 
extent  in  space ;  we  reject  with  scorn  the  idea  that  it  is 
confined  within  a  petty  sphere  around  the  earth.     Yet  the 
wisest  of  men  before  Copernicus  could  not  have  believed 
the  universe  to  be  as  we  know  it  to  be.    It  would  have 
seemed  as  absurd  to  them  to  be  told  that  the  universe  is 
infinite,  as  it  is  to  us  to  be  told  that  it  is  spiritual.     And 
why  ?    Simply  because  they  ascribed  to  the  starry  heavens 
a  condition  which  belonged  not  to  it,  but  to  themselves. 
On  the  score  of  their  own  feelings  and  perceptions,  they 


52 


ILLUSTRATION  FROM  ASTRONOMY. 


[B.  I. 


C.  III.] 


ILLUSTRATION  FROM   ASTRONOMY. 


53 


believed  the  heavens  were  moving  round  the  earth,  and 
were  forced  therefore  to  conceive  of  them  as  thev  are  not. 
Nothing  could  render  it  possible  for  men  to  think  rightly 
of  the  universe  in  its  relation  to  space,  but  the  accepting 
for  their  own  a  condition  which  they  perceived,  and  only 
could  perceive,  as  existing  in  that  universe.  Just  so  it  is 
with  us.  So  long  as  we  conceive  a  deadness  in  nature  we 
cannot  tliink  of  it  as  it  truly  is  :  but  if  we  will  accept  that 
condition  for  our  own,  then  there  is  no  more  difficulty. 
When  men  ceased  to  attribute  their  own  motion  to  the 
universe,  it  expanded  to  the  Infinite  ;  if  we  cease  to  attrib- 
ute our  inertness  to  the  universe,  it  rises  to  the  Spiritual. 
Self-abnegation  is  the  law  of  knowing.  The  universe  can- 
not be  infinite  if  it  be  revolving  round  the  earth  ;  it  cannot 
be  spiritual  if  it  be  inert.  Is  it  a  dead  universe  or  a  dead 
humanity  ;  a  revolving  heavens  or  revolving  earth  ? 

Again  :  it  may  be  asked.  Are  these  things  that  we  per- 
ceive by  sense  spiritual,  or  what  are  they,  and  why  do  we 
perceive  them  ?  To  this  it  is  to  be  replied,  that  the  spirit- 
ual fact  acting  upon  us,  being  such  as  we  are,  causes  us  to 
perceive  in  the  way  we  do  ;  but  that  the  impressions  we 
thus  receive  do  not  correspond  with  that  which  truly  ex- 
ists. Man's  own  condition  has  to  be  considered  ;  it  makes 
that  which  we  feel  to  be  diflferent  from  that  which  is. 
These  objects  of  sense  are  the  phenomena  resulting  from 
the  relation  of  the  fact  to  us,  but  not  tliemselvcs  the  fact. 
They  are  the  mode  in  which  man  perceives  that  which  is. 
The  specks  of  light  which  we  see  in  the  lieavens  are  the 
appearances  which  result  from  the  relation  between  the 
heavenly  bodies  and  ourselves,  but  by  no  means  do  they 
correspond  to  those  bodies.  The  heavens  are  not  as  they 
are  to  us.  A  very  difi'erent  thing  acting  upon  us  makes 
us  perceive  that  appearance ;  compels  us,  while  in  igno- 
rance, to  believe  the  appearance  to  he  tlic  trutli. 


Our  perception,  our  necessary  belief  in  the  world  as 
physical,  until  we  have  learnt  why  it  appears  so,  our  being 
affected  by  physical  things  as  we  are,  so  moved  by  them 
and  so  deceived — that  they,  although  not  truly  real,  but 
only  phenomenal,  are  real  to  us,  and  determine  our  entire 
experience  and  life  ;  all  this  is  part  of  that  work  in  re- 
spect to  man  in  which  his  relation  to  the  spiritual  world 
consists.  The  astronomical  fact  is  not  those  little  specks 
which  answer  to  our  perceptions,  but  that  mighty  universe 
which  we  have  learnt  from  them.  So  the  true  and  abso- 
lute fact  of  nature  is  not  these  physical  things  which 
answer  to  our  perceptions,  but  that  higher  fact  which  has 
to  be  learnt  from  them.  By  man's  littleness  and  defi- 
ciency, the  impression  nature  produces  upon  him  is  below 
the  truth  of  it.  We  have  to  remember  this  before  we  can 
think  of  it  aright. 

The  problem  presented  by  astronomy  to  man,  and  the 
mode  of  its  solution,  are  an  image  of  the  larger  and  higher 
problem  presented  by  the  world,  and  of  the  mode  in  which 
its  solution  is  affected.  Our  perception  being  modified  by 
an  unknown  condition  affecting  ourselves,  we  have  to 
learn  what  that  condition  is.  There  is  only  one  way  in 
which  such  a  problem  can  be  solved  : — 

The  subjective  element  must  be  recognised  as  subjective, 
and  transferred  from  that  which  is  apart  from  ourselves, 
to  that  which  implicates  ourselves.  In  astronomy  the 
history  of  the  process  is  simple,  and  its  essential  features 
clearly  marked.  The  appearance  of  motion  due  to  man's 
own  condition  was  observed,  investigated,  the  relations 
which  exist  in  respect  to  it  accurately  noted,  under  the 
conviction  that  the  truth  corresponded  to  the  appearance. 
From  this  work  of  observation  arose  hypotheses,  which 
were  necessary  to  represent  the  appearances  observed. 
These  were  the  epicycles.    The  planetary  motions  were  so 


trS 


ILLUSTKATION  FROM  ASTKONOMY. 


[B.  I. 


irregular,  owing  to  the  combination  of  their  motion  around 
the  sun  with  their  apparent  motion  round  the  earth,  that 
an  immense  number  of  revolving  wheels  were  supposed, 
in  various  relations  to  each  other,  by  the  combined  motions 
of  which  the  apparent  motions  could  be  accurately  con- 
ceived. For  the  epicycles  were  afterwards  substituted, 
first,  a  motion  of  the  planets  round  the  sun,  and  finally, 
the   twofold  motion  of  the  earth. 

It  is  submitted  that  in  respect  to  the  inertness  we  per- 
ceive in  nature,  science  as  a  whole  has  the  same  work  to 
perform  as  astronomy  performed  in  relation  to  the  motion 
we  perceive  in  the  heavens :  and  it  is  here  argued  that 
this  work  is  performed  in  the  two  cases  in  precisely  the 
same  way.    The  appearance  is  observed,  investigated,  and 
the  relations  which  exist  in  respect  to  it  accurately  noted, 
under  the  supposition  that  it  is  the  fact.     Hence  arise 
hypotheses  even  more   numerous   and  complicated  than 
those  of  the  old  astronomy  :  they  are  necessary  to  repre- 
sent an  inertness  affecting  ourselves  as  if  it  existed  in  tlie 
universe.     These  hypotheses,  expressing  the  observed  re- 
lations, constitute  the  substance  of  science  as  it  exists  at 
present.     They  accurately,  and  in  the  best  way,  represent 
that  which  is  the  phenomenon,  that  which  man  perceives. 
But  so  did  the  epicycles.     Why,  then,  were  the  epicycles 
rejected?    Partly  for  the  reason  that  they  became  too 
complicated  to  be  endured.    They  taxed  the  mind  of  man 
beyond  the  bounds  of  possibility,  and  the  simpler  concep- 
tion took  their  place  because  it  was  simpler.     So  with 
science :  the  hypotheses  with  which  it  is  encumbered  are 
become  too  complicated.    All  these  hypotheses  are  ren- 
dered necessary  by  the  supposition  that  nature  is  inert, 
and  the  simpler  conception  that  the  inertness  is  man's,  has 
claim  to  take  their  place  because  it  is  simpler.     Our  pres- 
ent science  represents  an  astronomy  that  leaves  the  earth 


\ 


C.  III.]  ILLUSTRATION  FROM  ASTRONOMY.  55 

in  the  centre.  As  the  wrongness  of  that  conception  was 
made  manifest  by  the  suppositions  which  it  rendered  neces- 
sary, so  the  wrongness  of  our  conception  of  nature  as 
being  truly  inert,  instead  of  only  being  felt  so  by  man,  is 
manifested  by  the  suppositions  we  are  forced  to  form.  We 
are  compelled  to  admit  our  natural  idea  untenable.  The 
fact  cannot  be  as  it  is  to  us. 

We  can  maintain  our  natural  conception  of  nature  only 
so  long  as  we  have  an  unlimited  indulgence  in  hypotheses, 
and  frame  a  new  supposition,  of  property,  or  principle,  or 
law,  for  every  fresh  phenomenon  that  is  discovered,  as  the 
ancients  invented  a  new  epicycle  for  every  new  irregular- 
ity observed  in  the  planetary  motion.  When  these  sup- 
positions are  inquired  into,  and  tested  whether  or  not  they 
can  truly  be,  the  case  begins  to  appear  different.* 

In  astronomy  men  admitted  so  long  that  the  motion  was 
in  the  heavens,  because  it  was  tacitly  assumed  :  attention 
was  not  directed  to  that  question.  When  the  inquiry  was 
once  distinctly  raised,  it  could  be  decided  only  in  one  way. 
So  have  we  admitted  so  long  the  inertness  we  certainly 


•  See  'A  Speculation  concerning  Matter,'  by  Professor  Faraday: 
Phdos.  Mag.  The  celebrated  Dr.  Young  expresses  his  dissatisfaction  thus:— 
'  It  has  been  of  late  very  customary  to  consider  all  the  phenomena  of  nature 
as  derived  from  the  motions  of  the  corpuscles  of  matter  agitated  by  forces 
varying  according  to  certain  intricate  laws  which  are  supposed  to  be  pri- 
mary  qualities,  and  for  which  it  is  a  kmd  of  sacrilege  to  attempt  to  assign 
any  ulterior  cause When  a  geometrican  has  translated  this  lan- 
guage into  his  o^ti,  and  converted  the  formula  into  a  curve  with  as  many 
flexures  and  reflections  as  the  labyrinth  of  Daedalus,  he  imagines  that  he 
has  depicted  to  the  senses  the  whole  procedure  of  nature.  Such  methods 
may  often  be  of  temporary  advantage  as  long  as  we  are  contented  to  con- 
sider them  as  classifications  of  phenomena  only ;  but  the  grand  scheme  of 
the  universe  must  surely,  amidst  all  its  stupendous  diversity  of  part;s,  pre- 
serve a  more  dignified  simplicity  of  plan  and  of  principles  than  is  compat- 
ible with  these  complicated  suppositions.'— Young's  Z«cts.  Kelland's  Ed., 
1845,  p.  476. 


50 


ILLUSTRATION  FROM  ASTRONOMY. 


[B.  I. 


feel,  to  be  in  nature,  only  because  it  has  been  tacitly  as- 
sumed to  be  so.  The  question  has  not  been  asked  whether 
it  truly  is  so  or  not.  When  once  attention  is  fixed  on  it, 
and  the  inquiry  distinctly  raised.  Is  there  inaction  in 
nature,  or  inadequate  apprehension  on  the  part  of  man  ? 
can  it  be  decided  except  in  one  way  ?  Fairly  to  ask.the 
question  is  the  difficulty,  not  to  answer  it ;  to  free  our- 
selves sufficiently  from  conclusions  which  have  always  been 
taken  for  granted. 

The  argument  which  has  been  used  respecting  the  Co- 
pernican  Astronomy,  that  the  senses  do  not  deceive  us  in 
respect  to  the  apparent  motion,  but  give  us  an  impression 
which  is  equally  consistent  with  either  of  two  explana- 
tions, applies  in  the  same  way  to  the  question  whether  the 
inertness  be  in  nature  or  in  man.    Nature  need  not  be 
inert  if  man  wants  life ;  our  perception  of  inertness  can- 
not prove  it  to  be  in  nature  rather  than  affecting  man.    It 
proves  only  that  there  is  defectiveness  j  there  is  a  dead- 
ness  either  in  nature  or  in  man.     If  we  will  not  allow  it 
to  be  in  man,  then  we  must  affirm  it  to  be  in  nature,  wliich 
we  find  so  abhorrent ;  but  if  man  wants  life,  then  nature 
rises  into  joy.     Then  it  must  be  living.     Spiritual  and 
physical,  active  and  inert,  are  simply  living  and  dead. 
But  this  is  not  all :  The  force  of  the  demonstration  of  the 
motion  of  the  earth,  against  the  epicycles,  consisted  in 
chief  part  in  this :   that  it  showed  why  our  perception 
must  be  such  as  it  is.    The  old  astronomy  took  the  appa- 
rent motion  of  the  heavens  and  said,  We  perceive  it  so 
because  it  is  so,  and  these  are  the  conceptions  which  we 
must  form   respecting   it.      The   Copernican  Astronomy 
takes  a  different  ground.    It  says.  These  are  the  facts,  and 
therefore  our  perception  must  be  as  it  is  ;  the  appearance 
must  be  this.     In  this  attitude  towards  our  perception,  it 
has  an  infallible  security  for  prevalence.    For  the  human 


c.  III.] 


ILLUSTRATION  FROM   ASTRONOMY. 


67 


\ 


mind  demands  in  all  cases  to  know  why  the  appearance 
must  be  such  as  it  is.  It  demands  to  see  its  perceptions 
necessary.  This  constitutes  indeed  the  necessity  of  hy- 
potheses ;  but  hypotheses  cannot  maintain  themselves,  for 
they  deceive  the  instinct  instead  of  fulfilling  it.  They  do 
not  show  our  perceptions  to  be  necessary,  but  merely 
assert  something  on  their  authority.  They  are  like  a 
vicious  argument  in  a  circle ;  there  is  an  appearance  of 
proof  where  there  is  truly  none.  To  say,  *  We  perceive 
nature  inert  because  it  is  so,  and  these  are  the  conceptions 
we  must  form  respecting  it,'  is  not  to  show  our  perception 
necessary,  it  is  to  make  a  hypothesis. 

But  the  transference  of  the  inertness  to  man  puts  these 
things  in  the  right  relation.  We  understand  our  percep- 
tion to  be  necessary,  and  see  why  the  phenomenon  must 
be  such  as  it  is.  The  fact  being  the  absolute  not-inert 
world,  with  a  deadness  affecting  man,  the  perception 
should  be,  must  be,  that  of  an  inert  world  (that  is,  a  phys- 
ical world)  even  as  it  is.  In  this  the  mind  can  rest,  its 
demands  are  satisfied.  The  hypotheses  have  served  their 
purpose. 

The  direct  proof  that  the  inertness  perceived  as  exter- 
nal is  man's,  corresponds  also,  in  part,  with  that  which 
supports  the  Copernican  Astronomy  ;  and  especially  in 
this,  that  to  admit  the  inertness  man's  renders  possible  a 
satisfactory  belief  respecting  the  universe  itself.  Know- 
ing that  the  heavens  are  not  revolving  as  they  seem,  we 
can  understand  and  enter  into  the  relations  of  its  parts  ; 
it  appears  before  us  a  reasonable,  consistent  scheme  of 
things ;  the  entire  conception  so  commends  itself  to  our 
judgment  that  the  evidence  amounts  to  demonstration. 
Even  so,  knowing  that  nature  is  not  dead  as  it  seems,  man 
and  his  relation  to  the  world  are  presented  to  us  in  a  way 
which  we  can  partly  enter  into  and  understand,  and  which 
3* 


58 


ILLUSTRATION  FROM  ASTRONOMY. 


[B.  L 


SO  assures  itself  to  our  judgment  and  our  feelings,  that  we 
cannot  doubt  the  appearance  has  received  its  interpreta- 
tion. We  can  think  justly  of  man,  worthily  of  nature. 
The  problem  of  the  universe  embarrasses  the  intellect, 
pains  the  heart,  cramps  and  constrains  the  thoughts  no 
more.  It  is  a  thing,  in  itself,  and  forever,  certain  that  the 
necessity  of  nature  must  be  love.  An  inert  necessity  must 
have  been  felt,  must  have  been  supposed  to  exist,  by  a 
being  in  whom  there  is  defect ;  but  the  necessity  that  can 
BE  is  love. 

Another  respect  in  which  astronomy  remarkably  illus- 
trates the  doctrine  that  the  inertness  felt  in  nature  is  in 
man,  is  furnished  by  the  very  difficulty  of  admitting  it. 
The  ground  of  this  difficulty  is,  or  seems  to  be,  that  it  is 
against  our  consciousness.     We  have  a  conviction,  so  in- 
tuitive, so  apparently  insuperable,  that  man  is  not  unspir- 
itual,  is  not  inert.    On  the  contrary,  this  appears  to  be  his 
distinguishing  characteristic.    If  we  cannot  be  sure  of  this, 
of  what  can  we  be  sure  ?    All  our  life,  all  our  thoughts, 
are  moulded  to  this  persuasion.     We  base  it  on  our  con- 
sciousness.    This  is,  however,  virtually  the  same  difficulty 
with  which  the  Copernican  Astronomy  had  to  contend. 
We  are  certainly  conscious,  or  seem  to  be  conscious,  that 
we  are  at  rest  in  space,  and  that  the  earth  is  immovable 
beneath  us.    The  earth  was  to  the  ancients  distinguished 
from  all  the  heavenly  bodies  by  being  alone  steadfast,  and 
that  conviction  was  based  upon  the  strongest  evidence 
that  consciousness  can  afford.     Why  should  not  our  con- 
viction that  man  is  distinguished  from  all  the  rest  of  the 
creation  that  he  perceives,  by  being  spiritual  while  that  is 
inert,  be  a  similar  error  ?  Why  should  not  his  defect  make 
him  perceive  a  universal  defectiveness,  to  which  he  feels 
himself  the  sole  exception  ? 
Even  yet  it  is  strange  to  us  when  we  reflect,  that  we 


c.  III.J 


ILLUSTRATION   FROM   ASTRONOMY. 


59 


■;< 


should  be  borne  so  rapidly  through  space  and  have  no 
consciousness  of  it ;  but  we  admit  it  freely  on  the  evi- 
dence that  observation  has  supplied.  And  chiefly  on  the 
ground  that  the  admission  is  necessary  to  enable  us  to 
understand  the  universe. 

The  same  evidence  may  make  us  admit  that  this  is  not 
man's  life.  For  it  should  be  remembered  that  it  is  against 
our  feeling  and  consciousness,  not  against  an  inference  or 
belief  only,  that  the  Copernican  Astronomy  has  made  good 
its  ground.  The  intenscst  natural  convictions,  the  strongest 
persuasions  of  sense,  inevitably  yield  to  reason  and  evi- 
dence. That  is  a  law  of  nature.  If  the  world  is  not 
physical,  men  will  as  certainly  believe  it  as  that  the 
heavens  do  not  revolve. 

Nor  should  there  be  much  reluctance.  For  what  is  it 
but  to  put  ourselves  out  of  the  centre,  to  be  content  to  con- 
ceive of  ourselves  as  subordinate  and  not  chief,  as  being 
little  parts  of  a  greater  whole,  instead  of  the  end  for  which 
all  exists  ? 

When  has  it  been  found  that  humility,  speaking  in  the 
name  of  reason  and  observation,  has  deceived  us  ?  We 
think  too  much  of  ourselves.  This  gives  the  fatal  bias  to 
our  thoughts  ;  is  the  judicial  blindness  of  our  eyes.  God 
punishes  us  for  pride  by  ignorance  and  error. 

Let  us  remember  that  the  aversion  to  admit  the  universe 
not  revolving  was  of  old  as  great  as  can  possibly  be  ours 
to  admit  it  not  inert.  No  intensity  of  feeling,  no  appa- 
rent absurdity  or  impossibility  in  the  idea,  or  firm  convic- 
tion of  the  contrary,  can  lend  any  weight  to  the  argument. 
Observation  and  the  sound  use  of  reason  are  the  sole  arbi- 
ters ;  our  convictions  and  feelings  and  necessary  persua- 
sions are  nothing.  Rather,  if  they  must  be  taken  into  the 
account,  they  are  on  the  wrong  side  ;  for  they  are  the 


■i 


60 


ILLUSTRATION  FROM  ASTRONOMY, 


[B.  I, 


C.  IIL] 


ILLUSTRATION   FROM  ASTRONOMY. 


61 


fruits  of  ignorance,  they  are  measurements  of  infinity  by 
finitude. 

We  require  to  know  why,  if  man  be  inert,  our  conscious- 
ness is  such  as  it  is.   Why  do  we  feel  that  our  will  is  free  ? 
No  theory  has  any  claim  to  acceptance  that  does  not 
account  for  this  feeling.     The  question  of  Freewill  will  be 
discussed  hereafter  ;*  here  it  may  suffice  to  observe,  in 
general,  that  it  finds  a  perfect  solution  if  the  spirituality 
of  the  universe  be  granted.    Man  and  nature  cannot  both 
be  inert,  but  the  inertness  may  be  in  man  if  it  be  not  in 
nature.    We  think  man  free  and  nature  not  free.    The 
consciousness  of  our  own  rest,  and  perception  of  motion  in 
the  heavens,  affords  a  striking  parallel.    That  man's  will  is 
free  may  be  granted,  if  that  form  of  expression  be  held  to 
be  of  value.     He  has   a  relative  freedom  ;    hence  his 
capacity  for  virtue  and  for  criminality  ;  but  that  this  con- 
stitutes true  freedom  for  man  is  entirely  another  proposi- 
tion.    It  sounds  strange  with  the  words  of  the  New 
Testament  in  our  memory  to  hear  the  freedom  of  man 
affirmed  as  a  Christian  doctrine.    *  Where  the  spirit  of 
the  Lord  is  there  is  liberty.'    Man  is  free  just  in  so  far  as 
he  has  life. 

In  another  respect  astronomy  aids  our  thought.  The 
inertness  that  is  affirmed  of  man  is  not  such  inertness  as 
we  seem  to  perceive  in  nature.  That  physical  inertness 
does  not,  cannot,  exist  at  all,  it  can  only  appear.  It  is  a 
phenomenon  due  to  man's  inertness,  but  is  not  the  same 
thing. 

Even  so  the  motions  that  appear  in  the  heavens,  real  as 
they  are  to  those  who  do  not  know  the  motion  that  causes 
them  to  appear,  do  not  and  cannot  exist.  They  are  ap- 
pearances only.    The  truly  existing  motion  is  of  another 


I 


( 


MIJIIHI! I 


•  See  Book  DL,  Chap.  viL 


kind,  of  such  a  kind  as  to  necessitate  that  appearance,  but 
not  the  same  as  the  appearance.  Man's  inertness  is  such 
as  to  cause  a  physical  inertness  to  appear  to  him  in  nature, 
but  it  is  not  that  physical  inertness.  The  inertness  of  man 
is  spiritual,  real,  actual;  a  true,  absolute  death,  not  a 
phenomenal  one.  Physical  inertness  is  phenomenal  only. 
From  the  true  inertness  come  self-will,  arbitrariness  and  sin. 

Yet  by  the  study  of  the  merely  phenomenal  motions  in 
the  heavens,  which  have  no  existence,  but  are  only  the  im- 
pression produced  on  us  by  another  motion  of  a  different 
kind,  the  truth  was  discovered.  From  the  study  of  effects 
comes  the  knowledge  of  causes.  Even  so,  from  the  study 
of  the  merely  phenomenal  inertness  in  nature,  comes  a 
knowledge  of  the  true  inertness  which  affects  ourselves. 

And  the  mode  in  which  science  effects  this  result  is 
beautiful.  For  as  astronomy  dealt  only  with  the  motions 
of  the  heavenly  bodies,  having  no  possible  regard  to  their 
essence  ;  that  is,  chiefly  with  the  subjective  element,  which 
is  thereby  discovered  to  be  due  to  ourselves ;  so  does 
science  deal  chiefly  with  inertia  under  the  form  of  cause 
and  effect.  Science  puts  away  the  consideration  of  essence 
or  being,  and  regards  only  causative  connection.  It  studies 
emphatically  the  subjective  element,  the  inertia.  Hence 
its  adaptation  to  reveal  to  us  its  source  in  man.  As  the 
stars  are  at  a  distance  from  us,  so  that  we  can  only  ob- 
serve their  motions  ;  so  does  science  as  it  were  put  nature 
at  a  distance,  and  set  aside  all  more  intimate  questions  as 
to  what  it  is,  to  study  one  particular  condition.  It  deals 
with  inertia  alone ;  with  causes  and  effects ;  phenomena 
and  laws. 

Yet  this  last  expression  is  true  only  in  a  limited  sense. 
It  is  true  of  the  present,  but  not  of  that  which  must  be. 
The  true  work  of  science  is  to  discover  facts.  But  the 
other  position  must  be  taken  first,  even  as  the  epicycle,  or 


62 


ILLUSTUATION   FROM   ASTRONOMY. 


[B.  I. 


apparent,  astronomy  must  have  preceded  the  Copernican. 
The  old  astronomy  dealt  with  appearances  and  their  laws 
alone,  which  it  presented  with  the  most  truthful  fidelity. 
To  this  day  no  better  method  can  be  found  of  representing 
those  apparent  motions.  But  the  interpretation  of  those  ap- 
pearances reveals  that  which  is,  in  relation  to  astronomy,  the 
fact.  Nor  can  science  end  in  phenomena  and  laws;  its  desti- 
ny, its  instincts,  call  it  to  a  worthier  work.  As  well  might 
astronomy  have  left  the  earth  for  ever  in  the  centre  of  the 
universe,  and  contented  itself  with  the  exhibition  of  ap- 
pearances and  construction  of  theories  which  should  ac- 
count for  them,  as  science  leave  nature  inert  to  our  belief, 
and  end  its  work  in  manifesting  phenomena  and  laws 
alone.  Science  abjures  the  inquiry  after  essences  only 
to  avoid  false  essences  ;  first  the  fact  must  be  made  known 
before  its  essence  can  be  inquired  into.  To  seek  the 
essence  of  a  phenomenon  were  too  great  a  mistake  ;  it  only 
appears  to  be.  This  is  the  abasement  which  comes  before 
exaltation,  the  self-control  and  humbleness  which  are  re- 
warded with  unforeseen  success.  The  astronomers  of  old 
little  foreknew  what  work  they  were  preparing  for,  what 
higher,  truer  knowledge  than  ever  they  could  conceive 
would  flow  from  their  labors.  As  little  could  the  noble 
army  of  martyrs  who  have  created  science  have  foreseen 
the  result  their  labors  would  achieve.  For  when  the  fact  of 
nature  is  seen  to  be  not  inert  but  spiritual,  then  does  science 
deal  with  the  fact,  and  no  more  with  phenomena  alone. 

In  astronomy,  again,  we  see  that  the  false  conception  of 
the  universe  was  overthrown  by  the  observation  of  rela- 
iions.  For  the  relations  which  observation  discovers  be- 
long rightly  to  the  truth,  and  not  to  the  appearance  ;  and 
will  not  accord  with  the  false  conception.  The  attempt  to 
harmonize  them  with  that  false  conception  necessitated  the 
hypotheses  which  became  at  length  so  manifestly  false. 


C.  III.] 


ILLUSTRATION   FROM  ASTRONOMY. 


ds 


'I 


So  does  science  by  the  observation  of  relations  in  nature 
overthrow  the  false  conception  we  have  formed  of  it.    For 
those  relations  belong  rightly  to  the  spiritual  fact.     The 
attempt  to  harmonize  them  with  our  natural  impression 
necessitates  our  having  recourse  to  hypotheses  which  we 
feel  must  be  false  ;  it  produces  a  tension,  a  strain  upon  the 
mind,  which  ends  of  necessity  in  making  us  give  up  that 
false  conception,  natural,  and  at  first  unavoidable  as  it  is. 
Science  teaches  us  that  nature  is  not  such  as  it  appears  to 
us  ;  because  if  it  be,  we  must  believe  things  which  cannot 
be  believed,  we  must  invent  hypotheses  which  will  not  bear 
the  test  of  examination,  and  at  the  complexity  of  which 
our  natural  instincts  revolt.     The  oneness,  the  necessity, 
which  science  discovers  in  nature,  belong  to  a  fact  that  is 
not  inert  but  truly  active  ;  they  belong  to  holiness.     It  is 
by  science,  not  by  speculation,  that   the  life  of  nature 
is  made  known,  because  it  is  by  observation  only  that 
those  relations  become  known  by  which  false  conceptions 
can  be  rectified. 

Lastly  :  our  astronomical  knowledge  enables  us  to 
understand  how  easily,  when  once  we  are  familiar  with 
the  thought,  we  may  practically  and  conscientiously  recog- 
nise through  all  our  experience  a  spiritual  fact,  in  spite  of 
our  natural  feeling.  We  have  no  difficulty  in  always 
thinking  of  the  heavens  as  they  are,  and  not  as  they  ap- 
pear. The  apparent  relations  always  suggest  to  our 
thoughts  and  feelings  the  true  relations.  We  do,  without 
any  embarrassment  or  confusion,  recognise  what  universe 
we  live  in  ;  and  are  literally  in  a  different  universe  from 
those  who  have  not  astronomical  knowledge.  Just  so 
easy  is  it  for  any  man  to  be  consciously  aware  that  the 
universe  is  spiritual ;  just  so  naturally  may  the  apparent 
relations  suggest  to  him  the  true  ones,  just  so  literally  may 
he  be  in  a  different  world  from  those  who  do  not  know 


64 


ILLUSTRATION  FROM  ASTROXOMY. 


[B.  L 


C.  III.]  ILLUSTRATION  FROM  ASTRONOMY. 


65 


that  it  is  only  in  appearance  physical.  If  we  will  remem- 
ber that  man  wants  life,  as  we  remember  that  the  earth  is 
not  at  rest,  we  can  perfectly  well  understand,  and  always 
be  conscious,  that  the  fact  of  nature  is  spiritual.  All  our 
instincts  and  native  tendencies  combine  to  enforce  this 
belief ;  to  the  child  and  the  utterly  ignorant,  the  world  is 
always  spiritual,  though  in  a  false  and  perverted  sense. 

The  work  of  science,  in  the  discovery  of  invariableness 
or  law,  is  not  to  exclude  spirituality  or  action,  but  to  give 
to  it  its  true  meaning  of  holiness,  and  teach  us  that  the 
true  spiritual  is  not  that  which  man  has,  but  that  which  he 
wants.  Science  proves  nature  different  from  ourselves, 
but  places  it  not  below  us,  as  we  think,  but  above.  Man 
has  to  rise  to  become  one  with  the  fact  of  nature.  There 
IS  not  that  inert  existence  which  he  feels  to  be. 

Nothing  is  so  repugnant,  so  impossible,  as  truly  to 
believe  the  universe  to  be  such  as  the  theory  of  an  ex- 
ternal inertness  represents  it  to  be.  It  is  manifestly  more. 
Nature  cannot  be  dead.  We  cannot  help  speaking  of  her 
life,  inconsistent  though  it  be.  The  difficulties  with  which 
science  has  so  constantly  to  strive ;  the  obstacles  which 
theologians  and  poets  so  obstinately  put  in  her  way,  are 
but  the  expressions  of  this  feeling.  Why  do  men  so  de- 
terminately  maintain  a  special  vital  force,  not  identical 
with  physical  forces,  but  because  they  feel  that  life  is  truly 
spiritual,  and  will  not  have  it  made  mechanical  ?  Granted 
theirs  is  a  blind  and  unwise  struggle  ;  that  they  deny  the 
very  spirituality  they  seek  to  maintain,  and  treat  their 
best  friend  as  an  enemy.  Not  the  less  speaks  humanity  in 
them.  Life  is  spiritual,  and  nature  lives.  Rather,  far 
rather,  will  men  admit  man.  to  be  dead  than  the  universe, 
when  once  they  see  that  the  question  comes  to  that  issue. 
For  the  point  to  be  decided  is  not  whether  there  be  a 
deadness  at  all,  within  us  or  without.    There  is  a  dead- 


t 

Hi 
HI 

1 

h  #: 


ness :  we  perceive  it,  and  are  conscious  of  it  ever.  We 
have  embodied  it  in  our  language,  asserted  it  in  our  phi- 
losophy, made  it  the  corner-stone  of  our  science  in  the 
doctrine  of  inertia.  The  deadness  is  the  great  fact  of  our 
present  state  of  being,  that  which  gives  it  its  entire  char- 
acter. The  assertion  of  a  death  is  no  new  doctrine  ;  it  is 
no  doctrine  peculiar  to  religion.  The  only  question  is, 
where  is  it,  in  nature  or  in  man?  absolute  or  relative, 
affecting  the  universal  work  of  God,  or  our  miserable 
selves?  Where  is  the  want,  the  necessity  for  being 
altered  ?  Is  nature  wrapped  in  darkness,  or  is  man  blind? 
This  is  the  simple  choice  we  have  to  make.  A  recognition 
that  we  are  in  the  spiritual  world  does  not  demand  of  us 
so  great  a  change  in  our  conceptions  as  has  been  already 
accomplished  by  astronomy. 

Nor  does  our  understanding  that  the  phenomenon  is  not 
the  fact  make  any  difference  to  the  phenomenon  itself. 
Our  impressions  are  not  altered  j  tlic  only  question  is  con- 
cerning the  interpretation  we  put  upon  them.  We  perceive 
the  universe  as  inert.  Why?  Because  it  is  inert,  or 
because  our  impression  does  not  correspond  to  the  truth 
by  a  defect  of  man's  own  being?  This  is  almost  too 
simple  to  lay  stress  upon,  yet  there  is  apt  to  be  a  misap- 
prehension respecting  it.  The  sun  rises  and  sets  to  us  as 
it  did  to  the  first  of  men.  If  it  did  not,  we  could  not 
affirm  the  revolution  of  the  earth.  If  nature  were  not 
inert  to  us,  we  could  not  affirm  the  deadness  of  man.  The 
appearance  is  not  altered  by  our  better  knowledge :  the 
phenomenon  is  not  made  less  by  our  knowing  the  fact,  but 
more.  It  is  shorn  of  no  glory  or  value  that  it  possessed, 
but  receives  an  added  lustre,  a  new  significance.  To 
know  that  the  fact  of  nature  is  spiritual  leaves  us  all  that 
is  in  nature,  but  adds  to  it  infinitely  more.  We  do  not 
thereby  escape  from  the  state  which  makes  it  physical  to 


I 


! 


66  ILLUSTKATION  FROM  ASTRONOMY.  [b.  I. 

US,  but  we  are  freed  from  an  illusion.  The  spiritual  world 
must  and  should  affect  us  as  it  does.  To  be  affected 
otherwise,  either  man  must  be  different,  or  the  world  must 
not  be  spiritual. 

Man^s  defect  is  not  in  his  perceiving  the  world  as  pliysi- 
cal,  but  in  his  perceiving  it  as  a  reality  ;  in  his  not  feeling 
It  to  1)0  plienomenal  only :  even  as  our  ignorance  is  not 
the  cause  of  our  perceiving  the  heavens  move,  but  of  our 
thinking  such  motion  to  be  real.  From  this  state  we  can- 
not  escape  by  any  action  of  our  own,  nor  is  it  desirable 
we  should  escape :  but  we  can  recognise  the  trutli  We 
can  think  more  rightly,  though  our  impressions  remain  the 
same.  So  we  are  every  way  advantaged,  and,  especially, 
better  prepared  for  action. 

From  our  false  feeling  we  learn  what  man's  state  is. 
We  are  such  that  the  spiritual  is  physical  to  us,  the  active 
inert,  the  living  dead  ;  love  a  mechanical  necessitv.     Such 
IS  man  ;  such  his  defect ;  such  Iiis  necessity  for  being  made 
new.    Here  is  the  secret  of  },is  pride.    Because  he  is  dead 
he  sets  himself  up  as  the  centre  of  all  tilings,  and  feels 
himse  f  exalted  as  such  a  king.     He  admires  himself,  extols 
himself  seeks  to  subordinate  all  things  to  himself,  must 
make  all  things  contribute  to  his  pleasure ;  he  must  get 
all  he  can,  must  exercise  his  arbitrary  will,  will  yield 
nothing,  nor  forego,  nor  sacrifice  :  all  of  which  is  the 
opposite  to  God. 

He  does  not  know  that  all  this  is  from  a  miserable 
want :  that  as,  through  our  own  motion,  the  heavens  re- 
volve about  the  earth,  and  each  man  feels  himself  the  centre 
of  the  universal  sphere,  so  the  secret  of  self-exaltation, 
self-will,  self-regard,  and  self-assertion,  is  inertness.  He 
says  I  am  free,  and  nature  is  my  slave  :  he  does  not  know 
that  this  IS  death.  Should  he  not  rather  say  :  Tn  becoming 
one  with  that  which  nature  is,  I  live  ? 


'     S 


CHAPTER    IV. 

OP  KNOWING. 

The  inseparable  propriety  of  time,  which  is  ever  more  and  more  to  disclose  truth.— 
Adv.  of  Learning. 

Thus  astronomy  exhibits  an  instance  of  a  false  belief 
respecting  the  universe,  due  to  man's  own  condition.    A 
belief  established  by  universal  consent,  fortified  by  power- 
ful arguments,  and  lasting  many  ages.    Yet  a  belief  fertile 
in  practical  evils,  and  necessary  to  be  removed  before  man 
could  use  the  world  ariglit.    Astronomy  shows  us  also  the 
simple  and  natural  mode,  of  observation  and  learning  from 
nature,  by  which  such  false  beliefs  are  rectified.    It  should 
not  therefore  be  urged  against  the  opinion  that  the  fact  of 
nature  is  spiritual,  that  there  is  universal  belief  against  it, 
and  a  natural  persuasion  of  the  strongest  kind ;  nor  should 
it  prejudice  the  inquiry  that  so  long  a  period  has  elapsed 
without  the  error  being  rectified.    All  these  things  we 
know  may  be ;  they  have  been  before ;  it  is  natural  that 
they  should  be.    And  if  more  ages  have  passed  before  man 
leanis  that  he  wants  life,  than  before  he  discovered  that 
the  earth  was  not  steadfast  in  the  centre  of  the  sphere,  it 
may  be  remembered  that  the  work  is  greater,  and  demands 
a  larger  preparation. 

And  if  there  appear  to  be  strong  arguments  against  this 
opinion,  and  much  difficulty  in  admitting  it,  it  may  not  be 
amiss  to  recall  to  mind  that  the  true  astronomy,  basing 

(67) 


68 


OF  KNOWING. 


[B.  I. 


C.  IV.] 


OF  KNOWING. 


itself  upon  the  one  certain  argument  that  the  perceived 
motion  could  not  be  in  the  heavens,  yet  met  with  many 
difficulties,  and  was  opposed  by  strong  arguments.  Nothing 
could  persuade  a  man  so  admirable  in  all  respects,  and  so 
well  qualified  to  form  a  right  opinion,  as  the  Astronomer 
Tycho  Brahe,  that  the  earth  was  not  at  rest.  The  firm 
persuasion  of  our  steadfastness,  except  when  we  move  or 
are  moved  relatively  to  the  things  around  us,  he  could  not 
give  up ;  as  hard  that  was  to  him,  as  it  seems  to  us  to  give 
up  the  persuasion  of  man's  life,  except  when  he  physically 
dies.  Apparently  he  could  not  entertain  the  conception 
that  man  might  be  either  at  rest  or  moving  to  these  things, 
and  yet  be  not  at  rest,  truly  and  in  the  strict  meaning  of 
the  term  :  even  as  we  find  it  strange  to  think  that  man 
may  be  living  or  dead  to  this  earthly  life,  and  yet  not  truly 
living  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word. 

More  striking  still,  Bacon  himself,  the  great  inaugurator 
of  physical  discovery,  who  led  the  van  in  man's  deliverance 
from  the  persuasion  of  his  own  knowledge,  rejected  the 
doctrine  of  the  earth's  motion  ;  not  lightly,  nor  from  mere 
prejudice,  but  on  mistaken  arguments  drawn  apparently 
from  nature.  He  says :  '  So  we  may  see  that  the  opinion 
of  Copernicus  touching  the  rotation  of  the  earth,  which 
astronomy  itself  cannot  correct,  because  it  is  not  repugnant 
to  any  of  the  phenomena,  yet  natural  philosophy  may  cor- 
rect.' It  seemed  to  him  that  there  were  proofs,  from  other 
grounds,  against  it.  Even  so  it  might  appear  to  us  that, 
though  an  inertness  in  man  instead  of  in  nature  could  not 
be  disproved  from  science,  because  it  necessarily  agrees 
with  the  phenomena,  that  is,  with  an  absolute  conformity 
to  law  and  apparent  passiveness  in  nature,  yet  it  might  be 
set  aside  by  arguments  drawn  from  other  sources.  Bacon's 
example,  therefore,  may  teach  us  caution.  The  motion  of 
tlie  earth,  proved  by  astronomy,  refuses  to  be  disproved  on 


69 


I 


>!  J 


i 


any  other  ground.  May  not  a  deadness  in  man,  based  on 
the  simple  argument  that  the  perceived  inertness  cannot 
be  in  nature,  compel  a  like  assent? 

Doubtless  there  were  many  things  the  Copernican  Astron- 
omy could  not  explain.  Doubtless  it  was  not,  at  first,  fully 
reconcilable  with  all  that  was  justly  held  :  but  also,  demands 
were  made  upon  it  that  had  no  claim  to  be  regarded,  and 
arguments  were  used  against  it,  founded  on  opinions  which 
further  examination  overthrew.  The  experience  of  the 
past  may  teach  us  patience.  Can  it  be  that  our  impressions 
of  the  universe  should  need  no  correcting ;  is  it  not  certain 
they  demand  to  be  elevated  and  enlarged  ?  Is  it  evidence 
in  favor  of  our  notions,  or  not  rather  truly  against  them, 
that  man,  such  as  he  has  proved  himself  to  be,  has  been 
obliged  to  entertain  them  ?* 


o  'By  prejudices  of  opinion,'  says  Sir  John  Herschel,  'we  mean  opinions 
hastily  taken  up,  either  from  the  assertion  of  others,  from  our  o\^^l  super- 
ficial views,  or  from  vulgar  observation;  and  which  from  bemg  constantly 
admitted  without  dispute,  have  obtained  the  strong  hold  of  habit  upon  our 
minds.     Such  were  the  opinions  once  maintained  that  the  earth  is  the  great- 
est  body  in  the  universe,  and  placed  immovable  in  its  centre,  and  all  the  rest 
of  the  universe  created  for  its  sole  use;  that  it  is  the  nature  of  fire  aud  of 
sounds  to  ascend,  that  the  moonlight  is  cold,  that  dews  faU  from  the  air,  &c.' 
[May  we  not  add,  that  nature  is  mere  dead  matter.]     'To  combafimd  de- 
stroy such  prejudices  we  may  proceed  in  two  ways,  either  by  demonstrating 
the  falsehood  of  the  facts  alleged  in  their  support,  or  by  showing  how  the 
appearances  which  seem  to  countenance  them,  are  more  satisfactorily  ac- 
counted for  without  their  admission.    But  it  is  unfortunately  the  nature  of 
prejudices  of  opinion  to  remain  after  all  ground  for  their  reasonable  enter- 
tamtnent  is  destroyed.     Against  such  a  disposition  the  student  of  science 
must  contend  with  all  his  power.    Not  that  we  are  so  unreasonable  as  to  de- 
mand  of  him  an  instant  and  peremptory  dismission  of  all  his  former  opinions 
and  judgments:  all  we  require  is,  that  he  will  hold  them  without  bigotry, 
retam  tUl  he  sliall  see  reason  to  question  them,  and  be  ready  to  resign  them 
when  fairly  proved  untenable,  and  to  doubt  them  when  the  weight  of  prob- 
abihty  IS  shown  to  lie  against  them.    If  he  refuse  this,  he  is  incapable  of 
science.' 


lO 


OF   KNOWING. 


[B.  I. 


But  with  regard  to  all  the  analogies  which  may  be  urged 
from  our  false  impressions  respecting  objects  of  sense,  to 
support  the  conclusion  that  nature  in  its  true  essence  is  not 
such  as  we  feel  it  to  be,  it  must  be  remembered  that  they 
are  but  analogies.  They  are  used  only  to  render  the  bear- 
ing of  the  argument  more  evident,  and  to  show  how  in  hu- 
man life,  as  elsewhere  in  nature,  one  thing  prefigures  and 
prepares  for  another. 

The  cases  are  on  a  different  level.  In  the  one,  an  accu- 
rate conception  is  substituted  for  a  conception  conformed 
to  a  merely  sensuous  appearance  ;  in  the  other,  a  belief  in 
that  which  is  not  to  be  conceived  is  substituted  for  a  belief 
in  the  existence  of  that  which  is  conformed  to  our  mode 
of  thought.  Which  indeed  is  but  to  say  that  the  very  es- 
sence of  being  is  above  our  power  of  conceiving. 

The  position  affirmed  is  that  the  fact  of  natui^e  does  not 
correspond  to  our  conceptions,  even  as  we  know  it  does  not 
correspond  to  our  sensuous  impressions  :  and  that  in  re- 
spect to  our  conceptions,  as  to  our  senses,  this  truer  knowl- 
edge is  acquired  through  the  examination,  and  testing  by 
observation  and  reflection,  of  that  which  we  have  believed 
to  be.    When  it  is  proved  that  things  which  are  to  our 
sense  cannot  be  that  which  truly  exists  we  abandon  the  be- 
lief  without  hesitation,  and  infer  a  different  existence.     We 
regard  those  impressions  no  more  as  authoritative,  but  look 
upon  them  as  portions  of  a  system  of  things  to  which  they 
belong  ;  and  in  reference  to  which,  though  not  answering 
to  the  truth,  they  are  such  as  we  ought  to  have,  such  tha't 
we  can  from  them,  by  due  consideration,  infer  what  the 
truth  must  be. 

So  should  we  act  when  it  is  proved  that  the  things  whicli 
present  themselves  to  our  conception  cannot  be  the  fact  of 
nature.  We  should  have  no  hesitation  in  giving  them  up 
also  ;  and  in  inferring  an  existence,  and  a  condition  of  our 


[\ 


! 


C.  IV.] 


OF  KNOWING. 


1 


own,  which  should  cause  us  rightly  to  have  such  concep- 
tions, although  not  themselves  answering  to  the  truth. 
Our  necessary  conceptions  of  nature  are  such  that  we  may, 
by  due  consideration,  infer  the  truth  from  them.     The  fact 
which  makes  us  conceive,  as  we  do,  a  physical  world,  we 
can  certainly  infer,  by  taking  into  account  man's  own  con- 
dition, to  have  quite  different  properties.     Our  conceptions 
should  be  placed  on  the  same  level  as  our  sensuous  impres- 
sions, not  as  themselves  authoritative,  but  as  supplying  the 
means  of  trustworthy  knowledge.    Thus,  if  the  moon  be 
not  truly  a  bright  disc,  although  that  is  what  we  must  see  ; 
so  neither  can  the  universe  be  truly  an  inert  existence, 
obeying  passive  laws,  although  that  is  what  we  must  con- 
ceive.    If  we  cannot  think  of  it  otherwise,  that  is  of  little 
moment ;  we  may  know  it  none  the  less  to  be  otherwise, 
and  by  the  necessity  of  our  thought  know  also  something 
respecting  man.     Even  so  we  cannot  see  the  moon  other'- 
wise  than  as  a  disc  ;  but  we  know  it  to  be  otherwise,  and 
by  the  necessity  of  our  sight  we  know  also  something  of 
ourselves. 

The  necessity  of  our  thought  is  like  the  necessity  of  our 
sensuous  perceptions,  not  an  authority,  not  a  thing  to  which 
our  belief  must  be  conformed,  but  a  fact  of  our  experience 
on  which  our  true  knowledge  must  be  based.  Both  alike 
bespeak  a  cause,  an  existence,  but  are  no  evidence  of  what 
kind  it  is. 

The  fact  of  nature  cannot  be  thought,  cannot  be  pre- 
sented to  the  intellect.  But  this  is  not  strange  :  it  must 
be  so.  The  fact  is  not,  therefore,  less  the  reality  to  us, 
nor  is  it  the  less  needful  for  us  to  remember  of  what  kind 
it  is.  It  is  admitted  that  that  which  is  true  to  thought 
cannot  be  presented  to  sense,  but  we  know  it  is  not  the 
less  to  be  regarded  on  that  account.  So  that  which  is 
(the  true  and  absolute  fact  of  nature)  is  none  the  less  to  be 


I 


72 


OF  KNOWING. 


[B.  I. 


regarded  because  it  cannot  be  presented  to  thought.  It 
cannot  be  within  the  scope  of  thought :  indeed  it  is  more 
to  us,  and  more  real,  and  more  truly  known  on  that  ac- 
count. Being,  as  apprehended  by  our  intellect,  should  be 
a  deadness  driven  by  inert  necessity.  Thereby  we  know 
it  and  ourselves.* 

And  with  regard  to  the  existence  of  the  things  we  touch 
and  use,  what  is  true  of  them  is  only  that  they  truly  have 
a  relative  existence.  They  are  relatively  to  us  :  they  have 
the  same  existence  as  our  bodies.  They  are  to  man's  feel- 
ing, to  his  consciousness.  The  existence  of  phenomenal 
things  is  not  denied  in  any  such  sense  as  to  leave  a  blank 
or  vacancy,  as  if  it  were  space  left  empty.  They  exist  as 
parts  of  the  whole  ;  but  that  whole  is  different  from  what 
we  conceive.  It  is  asserted  that  our  apprehension  of  the 
universe  is  inadequate. 

It  should,  however,  be  remembered,  with  reference  to  the 
illusions  of  the  senses  which  thought  corrects,  that  we  have 
no  other  kind  of  evidence  for  those  things  which  we  find 
most  real  and  certain,  than  we  have  for  those  which  are 
proved  to  be  illusions.  The  evidence  we  have  of  the  earth 
on  which  we  stand  is  not  truly  different  from  that  which 
we  have  of  a  bright  disc  in  the  heavens  ;  it  is  more,  but  it 
is  still  the  evidence  of  sense.  We  see  the  moon  as  a  disc, 
we  see  and  touch  the  earth  as  rock,  or  water,  or  tree,  or 
house ;  but  touch  may  be  deceptive  as  well  as  sight.  We 
have  but  two  united  senses  ;  we  have  not  a  security  against 
the  deceptiveness  of  sense.  We  know  only  that  the  earth 
is  to  us.    It  supports  us,  answers  to  our  efforts,  to  our  con- 


*  That  which  is  thought,  is  not  therefore  known.  Those  things  which 
we  most  truly  know  we  cannot  think.  Can  we  think  ourselves,  our  affec- 
tions, our  life,  our  Being  ?  Absolute  being  cannot  be  thought.  That  which 
is  thought  is,  of  necessity,  an  idea,  not  an  existence.  Ought  we  to  be  able 
to  put  the  universe  into  our  minds  ? 


0.  IV.] 


OF  KNOWING. 


73 


ceptions.  And  if  there  be  in  us  an  extreme  assurance,  that 
that  which  sight  and  touch  unitedly  aflfirm  must  be  truly 
that  which  is,  we  should  remember  that  there  is  in  us  the 
same  natural  assurance,  until  it  is  corrected,  of  the  cer- 
tainty of  sight  alone.  If  men  have  been  willing  to  deter- 
mine, upon  grounds  of  sound  reason,  what  is  truly  indi- 
cated by  that  which  they  only  see,  surely  it  may  be  ex- 
pected that  they  will  be  willing  to  use  the  like  consideration 
with  respect  to  that  which  they  both  see  and  touch. 
Truth  does  not  come  from  clinging  to  our  natural  con- 
victions. 

And  our  finding  these  sensuous  things  always  the  same, 
or  changing  according  to  definite  laws,  so  that  we  can  cal- 
culate upon  them,  use  them,  and  feel  them  reliable,  firm, 
and  true  :  this  does  not  affect  the  essential  nature  of  that 
which  IS.  The  fact,  being  ever  the  same,  is  ever  the  same 
to  us  ;  that  which  is  to  sense  will  be  to  sense  again,  that 
which  is  to  thought  will  be  the  same  to  thought  again. 
There  is  that  which  causes  us  to  see  a  bright  disc  in  the 
heavens,  and  so  long  as  it  is  the  same  and  we  are  the  same, 
so  long  shall  we  see  that  disc  ;  but  that  which  we  believe 
in,  through  such  seeing,  is  very  unlike  the  disc.  We  know 
that  if  we  saw  it  truly,  we  should  find  it  extremely  different. 
For  our  perception  of  such  a  disc  there  must  be  more  than 
we  perceive. 

Never,  indeed,  can  we  account  for  our  perception  by  the 
existence  of  things  which  correspond  to  it.  If  the  fact 
were  not  more  than  that,  never  could  we  perceive  so  much. 
Nay,  we  should  certainly  not  perceive  at  all.  How  should 
inert  things  make  us  perceive  ?  The  fact  of  our  perceiv- 
ing as  we  do  proves  the  existence  of  more  than  is  perceived. 
Can  our  apprehension  be  equal  to  nature's  excellence? 
Do  we  not,  even  in  respect  to  every  single  thing,  have  to 


4 


74 


OF  KNOWING. 


[B.  I. 


believe  more  in  that  thing  than  we  immediately  perceive  ? 
How  then  should  it  not  be  the  same  in  respect  to  the  sum 
of  all  ? 

For  our  experience  to  be  such  as  it  is,  there  must  be,  to 
our  feeling,  inert  or  physical  things.  We  must  perceive 
them  and  act  upon  them  ;  they  must  be  the  realities  of  our 
existence.  How  should  this  be  ?  Inertness  is  opposed  to 
being  :  there  cannot  truly  he  inert  existence.  We  must, 
therefore,  perceive  as  inert  that  which  is  not  inert ;  only 
so  can  the  things  we  have  to  do  with  be  passive,  dead,  ma- 
terial, such  that  we  can  exercise  force  upon  them,  and  find 
resistance.  Only  in  one  way  can  we  have  perception  and 
experience  of  inert  realities :  there  must  be,  apart  from 
man  true  not-inert  existence,  and  inertness  in  him  :  then  to 
him  there  will  be  inert  existence.  The  existence  without, 
the  inertness  within.  Is  not  this  the  solution  of  our  per- 
ception ?  Inert  things  thus  will  be  to  us ;  a  physical 
world,  answering  in  every  way  to  our  feeling  and  our  ac- 
tion. And  not  only  so  ;  but  thus  alone  can  it  be,  that 
the  things  which  are  the  realities  to  us  should  cease  and 
pass  away.  For  our  activity,  progress,  enjoyment,  for  this 
life  of  man,  the  tilings  that  are  to  us  must  change  ;  they 
must  have  been  but  be  no  more.  They  must  not  be,  but  be 
temporal  and  fleeting  :  the  forms  under  which  an  unchang- 
ing existence  is  perceived.  With  true  eternal  being 
around  him,  and  defect  in  man,  inert  and  passing  things 
are  his  realities.  He  dwells  amid  phenomena,  and  lives  a 
temporal  and  earthly  life. 

Do  we  ask :  How  should  man  be  in  an  inert  world  ? 
Let  us  ask  :  How  should  he  be  in  a  revolving  universe  ? 
These  two  questions  admit  of  one  reply.  He  is  not  so. 
The  universe  cannot  be  revolving.  Let  the  universe, 
therefore,  stand  fast,  and  man  revolve.    So  shall  be  to  him 


c.  IV.] 


OF   KNOWING. 


76 


day  and  night,  rising  and  setting  suns,  noonday  bright- 
ness for  liis  work,  and  solemn  revelations  of  the  stars  to 
lead  him  up  to  God.— The  universe  cannot  be  dead.  Let 
the  universe  be  living,  therefor.e,  and  man  be  dead.  So  to 
him  there  shall  be  a  world  of  passive  laws  and  lifeless 
uniformity,  a  world  subject  to  his  control,  invitant  to  his 
energy,  full  of  deep  lessons  to  his  heart. 


CHAPTER    V. 


OP      BEING. 


God  is  Lotk. 


We  have  necessarily  inferred,  from  our  experience,  the 
existence  of  an  inert  world  ;  conceiving  that  the  fact  cor- 
responds to  our  impressions.  But  what  we  are  compelled 
to  infer  depends,  in  every  case,  upon  our  knowledge :  only 
when  that  is  complete  and  exact,  can  an  inference,  how- 
ever necessary,  or  belief,  however  unavoidable,  possess 
correctness.  A  person  ignorant  of  any  essential  circum- 
stance, in  any  case,  necessarily  infers  an  erroneous  conclu- 
sion. The  necessity  of  a  belief  has  no  necessary  relation 
to  its  truth  ;  true  and  false  beliefs  are  equally  necessary 
to  instructed  and  uninstructed  persons  respectively.  Nor 
is  there  any  conscious  difference  to  the  mind,  in  respect  to 
its  necessity,  between  a  true  and  a  false  belief.  They  can 
be  distinguished  only  by  being  tested.  A  true  inference 
proves  itself  true  on  examination  ;  a  false  inference  is 
found  by  the  same  means  to  be  false,  and  proves  thereby 
ignorance  on  the  part  of  him  to  whom  it  has  been  neces- 
sary. 

These  are  very  obvious  considerations  to  apply  to  our 
opinions  respecting  the  world  ;  nor  would  there  have  been 
any  difficulty  in  applying  them,  but  for  one  circumstance, 
which  has  seemed  to  distinguish  those  opinions  from  our 
opinions  on  all  other  subjects.    It  has  been  thought  that 

(76) 


0.  v.] 


OF  BEING. 


77 


the  belief  respecting  the  world,  which  we  derive  from  our 
consciousness,  must  be  held  infallible,  because,  if  it  is  not 
so,  the  sole  basis  for  certainty  is  taken  away.  It  has  been 
supposed  that  if  such  belief  is  untrue,  we  not  only  are 
under  illusion,  but  are  hopelessly  and  inevitably  so  :  under 
an  illusion  from  which  man  can  never  escape.  It  is  not 
denied,  on  the  one  hand,  by  any  man  who  has  considered 
the  question,  that  our  consciousness  might  be  caused  in  a 
manner  quite  different  from  that  which  we  necessarily 
suppose  ;  yet  it  is  maintained,  on  the  other,  that  it  cannot 
be  so,  or  else  man  would  lie  under  an  irremediable  delu- 
sion. The  argument  is,  that  we  cannot  believe  that  his 
Creator  would  have  made  him  so  ;  would  have  given  him 
capacities,  instincts,  and  desires  only  to  mock  and  to  de- 
ceive him.  And  the  argument  is  in  itself  a  good  one.  We 
are  persuaded  that  He  has  given  to  man  the  means  of 
knowing  the  truth,  a  basis  for  certainty  ;  and  cannot  have 
left  him  hopelessly  under  illusion.  If  man  truly  had  no 
means  of  correcting  his  first  necessary  impressions  respect- 
ing the  nature  of  the  world,  there  would  be  a  fair  basis  for 
maintaining,  on  the  ground  of  the  divine  character,  that 
those  impressions  correspond  to  the  truth. 

But  this  position,  though  it  may  be  well  understood,  and 
the  grounds  of  it  appreciated,  may  be  seen  to  rest  on  an 
imperfect  knowledge.  It  is  not  to  be  opposed,  for  it 
merges  itself  into,  and  becomes,  a  different  one,  when  the 
work  of  science  is  rightly  apprehended.  It  is  not  a  true 
assumption  that  man  has  no  means  of  correcting  his  neces- 
sary impressions  respecting  the  world.  If  they  are  false, 
he  is  not  left  hopelessly  under  illusion  ;  he  is  not  mocked 
by  his  Creator.  The  means  whereby  that  illusion  is  es- 
caped from,  as  in  the  case  of  all  other  illusions,  are  at  his 
command,  in  investigation,  observation,  and  inquiry;  in 
the  right  use  of  his  natural  powers.    In  reasoning  upon 


78 


OF  BEING. 


[B.  I. 


this  subject  men  have  overlooked,  as  tliey  naturally  must 
have  done,  the  true  bearing  of  science  :  they  have  conceived 
it  wrongly ;  placing  it  in  subordination  to  their  natural 
impressions,  instead  of  recognising  in  it  a  power  to  correct 
them.  The  adaptation  of  science  to  this  end  escaped  their 
attention,  and  finding  no  other  means  by  which  our  im- 
pressions of  nature  could  be  corrected  if  they  were  wrong, 
the  infallibility  of  those  impressions  became  an  unavoidable 
inference. 

Science  operates  to  correct  our  natural  impressions  of 
the  world,  in  the  same  way  as  all  erroneous  natural  im- 
pressions are  corrected ;  by  increasing  our  knowledge,  by 
causing  us  to  see  more  truly  the  relations  of  things,'  by 
proving  to  us  that  our  conception  will  not  answer  to  the 
facts,  but  leads  us  into  difficulties  from  which  an  alteration 
of  our  conception  delivers  us.  Science  proves  nature  spir- 
itual and  man  wanting  in  his  true  life,  just  as  a  child 
learns  that  a  reflection  of  himself  in  a  glass  is  only  a  re- 
flection. There  is  nothing  peculiar  in  the  process,  it  is 
only  on  a  larger  scale ;  that  is,  on  a  larger  scale  relatively 
to  us. 

It  will  be  a  happy  day  for  man  when  he  clearly  under- 
stands that  that  which  is  great  and  important  to  him  is  not 
therefore  truly  great,  or  different  from  that  which  he  calls 
fc-ivial ;  for  well'we  know  that  there  is  nothing  which  so 
keeps  man  back  from  knowledge  as  his  pride,  nor  is  that 
pride  ever  more  fruitful  of  mischief  than  when  it  clothes 
Itself  in  the  garb  of  humility.  But  how  can  it  be  other 
than  a  false  humility,  that  presumes  to  fix  boundaries  to 
the  possibilities  of  human  knowledge,  and  says  to  God, 
Hitherto  Shalt  thou  go  in  instructing  humanity,  but  no 
farther.  Upon  what  basis  can  such  a  position  rest,  but  on 
the  assumption  that  we  cannot  be  deceived,  and  that  the 
fact  must  be  as  it  appears  to  us  ;  that  what  we  cannot  see 


c.  v.] 


OF  BEING. 


79 


any  means  of  doing  never  can  be  done  ?  Of  all  forms  of 
self-assertion,  none  is  more  arrogant,  hardly  any  is  more 
thinly  disguised.  For  all  this  means  that  we  cannot  admit 
it  possible  that  we  are  ignorant  and  mistaken,  unable  to 
expand  our  thoughts  to  the  true  meaning  of  that  which  is 
around  us  :— we,  assuming  that  we  regard  the  world  in  the 
very  best  and  truest  way  possible  to  man,  and  finding  that 
our  thoughts  end  in  mystery,  lay  it  down  as  certain  that 
no  man  ever  will  regard  the  world  mofe  truly,  and  so 
escape  the  mystery.  We  are  content  to  let  a  darkness 
rest  upon  God's  world  until  the  end  of  time,  but  not  to  ad- 
mit that  men  hereafter  may  be  wiser  than  ourselves.  Nor 
is  the  inconsistency  less  than  the  presumption.  For  the 
denial  that  man  can  know,  rests  upon  the  assumption  that 
he  does  know,  that  his  mode  of  conception  is  correct. 

Yet  there  has  been  a  certain  justification  for  this  mode 
of  thinking.  For  it  is  true  that  all  attempts  to  explain 
the  essential  nature  of  things  have  failed.  Thinking  as 
we  do,  the  essence  of  being  seems  hidden  from  our  eyes  in 
an  impenetrable  mystery  ;  our  faculties  seem  unfitted  to 
grapple  with  the  question.  It  was  natural  that  men  should 
say,  we  cannot  know  it.  Natural  but  not  right.  The  le- 
gitimate inference  would  rather  have  been  :  we  must  alter 
our  way  of  thinking  ;  we  are  conceiving  the  case  wrongly. 
For  we  have  fallen  into  a  strange  idea  about  mystery.  We 
seem  to  think  that  a  thing  can  be  mysterious  in  itself,  and 
apart  from  mistaken  or  inadequate  conceptions  respecting 
it ;  forgetting  that  all  things  must  be  clear  when  they  are 
known,  and  simple  when  they  are  understood.* 

Mysteries  mean  errors  :  they  arise  from  ignorance,  and 
ignorance  implies  a  false  conception.     To  all  but  Omnisci- 


*  Forgetting  also  the  scriptural  use  of  the  word  mystery  aa  denoting  a 
a  thing  unknown,  and  not  a  difiBculty. 


80 


OF  BEING. 


[B.  I. 


ence,  indeed,  there  must  be  mystery  ;  but  the  meaning  of 
mystery  is,  none  the  less,  that  we  are  thinking  wrongly. 
.   If  we  knew  more,  the  mystery  would  be  gone,  for  we  should 
conceive  differently.     Therefore  mystery  always  reveals  to 
us  wrong  thoughts.    The  essence  of  things  is  mysterious 
to  us  because  we  are  not  thinking  rightly  respecting  them. 
We  should  think  differently  if  we  had  more  knowledge. 
But  science  is  adapted  to  remove  the  mystery  from  nature 
because  it  adds  to  our  knowledge,  and  so  helps  us  to  think 
differently.     Explanations  and  philosophical  speculations 
necessarily  fail  in  their  attempts,  because  they  do  not  add 
to  our  knowledge,  and  cannot  therefore  alter  the  false  con- 
ception from  which  the  mystery  arises  ;  they  make  the 
mystery  manifest,  but  cannot  remove  it.    Because  philo- 
sophical speculation  fails  to  diminish  the  mystery  of  the 
world,  it  has  been  laid  down  that  the  mystery  cannot  be 
diminished.     But  this  is  too  hasty  a  conclusion.    There 
was  no  adaptation  in  the  instrument.*    Explanations  nat- 
urally fail  ;  it  is  by  their  failure  that  men  are  driven  to 
investigate  and  learn. 

But  science  holds  a  different  relation,  and  places  man  in 
another  attitude.  Science  is  an  investigation  of  nature, 
not  in  its  parts  only  but  as  a  whole,  and  thus  gives  man 
the  knowledge  by  which  he  may  escape  from  the  false  con- 
ception which  his  ignorance  has  imposed  upon  him. 

For  it  is  the  conception  of  existence  as  physical,  or 
inert,  which  involves  in  mystery  the  problem  of  Being. 
Of  physical  existence  the  problem  never  can  be  solved  ;  all 
attempts  must  land  us  in  deeper  darkness,  must  make  the 
contradictoriness  more  manifest.  We  are  trying  to  think 
of  that  as  '  being  '  which  cannot  be,  but  can  only  '  appear.' 


•  WeU  did  Bacon  say :  Ejuidem  arganum  yrcelui.     '  I  have  furnished  the 
instrament.* 


1 

' 

w 

4>      t 

c.  v.] 


OF  BEING. 


81 


We  are  putting  the  phenomenon  for  the  fact.    All  our  con- 
ceptions, all  our  attempts  to  think,  are  baffled  and  brought 
to   nought  by  this  error;    no  hypotheses  will  fill  the 
chasm,  no  imaginings  hide  from  ourselves  the  consciousness 
that  the  very  fact  and  essence  of  all  things  escapes  us. 
Conceiving  an  inertness  in  the  universe,  a  negation  not 
relative  but  absolute,  we  are  amazed  that  we  cannot  con- 
ceive what  that  BEING  can  be,  to  which  inertness  belongs. 
But  why  should  we  be  amazed  ?    How  can  inertness  be- 
long  to  BEING?    Inertness  is  deadness.     Here,  in  our- 
selves, is  the  being  to  which  inertness  belongs  ;  we  know 
it  but  too  well :  that  being  which  is  the  slave  of  passion, 
which  obeys  impulses,  which  does  as  it  likes,  not  doing 
what  it  ought  to  do,  and  doing  that  which  ought  not  to  be 
done ;  which  hears  in  its  heart  a  voice  saying,  Thou  art 
evil,  and  evil  things  await  thee,  for  evil  must  be  where 
thou  art ;  that  is  the  being  to  which  life  must  be  given, 
that  it  may  be  inert  no  more  ;  for  which  the  Saviour  must 
pour  forth  His  blood,  that  with  love  life  may  come. 

The  difficulty  arises  from  man's  false  supposition  of  him- 
self ;  he  seeks  to  know  by  sense  and  intellect,  which  deal 
only  with  phenomena.  Hence  he  fails  and  must  fail  •  and 
says  rightly,  I  must  be  different  before  I  can  know.  But 
still  his  thought  is  wrong  :  true  being  cannot  be  thought  • 
to  know  it  is  to  BE.  To  know  God  is  not  to  have  an 
opinion,  it  is  life.  True  knowing  relates  io  being,  not 
to  thinking.*  Man  cannot  think  ihat  which  is  ;  but  he 
can  KNOW  it,  for  it  may  be  in  him. 

If  the  apparent  inertness  of  nature  be  due  to  man's 
deadness,  the  course  of  man's  thought  must  have  been 


*  To  know,  is  'to  be  one  with.'    The  word  has  a  meaning  which  the 
inteUect  cannot  fathom.  ^ 

4* 


82 


OP  BEING. 


[B.  I. 


such  as  it  has  been.  Experience  gives  sufficient  evidence 
to  justify  this  conclusion  ;  for  man  does  perceive  according 
to  his  own  condition,  and  lie  does,  by  observatiou,  learn  to 
distinguish  the  truth  from  his  false  perception.  Just  such 
a  course  as  his  has  been  must  have  resulted  from  a  percep. 
tion  of  the  spiritual  as  not-spiritual,  by  defect  in  himself. 
He  must  have  been  firm  in  his  native  error  ;  he  must  have 
constructed  a  science  on  that  basis  ;  he  must  have  inferred 
an  inertness  without  him  ;  he  must  have  erected  hypotheses 
to  account  for  the  phenomena  accordingly  ;  he  must  have 
become  embarrassed  by  the  complexity  and  incongruity 
which  they  involved  ;  he  must  have  gone  deeper  into 
mystery  with  every  step ;  he  must  have  given  up  the  prob- 
lem in  despair.  All  this  has  been  and  is.  The  concep- 
tion that  the  world  is  spiritual,  and  only  physical  by 
man's  defect,  reveals  the  life  of  science. 

Still  more,  it  shows  why  men  must  have  aflSrmed  another 
and  a  higher  world  than  this  ;  must  have  affirmed  this  a 
degraded  state-  and  a  preparation  for  another ;  why  that 
doctrine  has  been  so  opposed  and  yet  maintains  its  ground. 
*  There  is  a  spiritual  world.'  *  There  is  no  other  world 
but  this.'  Both  are  true.  There  is  no  contradiction  here  ; 
only  the  self-evident  mistake  of  thinking  that  the  world  is 
such  as  we  feel  it  to  be. 

There  is,  indeed,  a  scheme  of  things  erected  on  the  sup- 
position that  inertness  exists  apart  from  man.  Phenomena 
have  been  set  up  as  the  reality,  and  all  the  suppositions  re- 
quired by  that  view  duly  inferred  and  asserted.  The 
system  is  complete,  and  is  freely  on  every  man's  tongue  ; 
it  is  the  theory  of  a  material  substratum. 

But  it  is  not  believed.  Denied  on  all  hands,  and  on  the 
most  various  grounds,  that  theory  appears  to  exist  on 
sufferance,  and  to  remain  only  because  there  was  nothing 


c.  v.] 


OF  BEING. 


83 


!    i 


If 


1 


that  could  take  its  place.  For  all  those  who  affirm  that 
our  knowledge  is  only  relative,  deny  it  absolutely  ;  those 
who  admit  that  the  essence  of  being  is  beyond  our  thought, 
deny  it  by  implication  ;  the  mass  of  men  have  no  thought 
of  it ;  metaphysicians  allow  that  it  can  be  disproved  ; 
preachers  affirm  it  to  be  an  empty  show,  an  unsubstantial 
dream.  But  its  worst  enemy  is  science.  All  the  others, 
while  they  deny  its  claims,  and  sap  its  foundations,  still 
leave  it  in  possession.  For  that  theory  cannot  be  over- 
thrown until  its  place  can  be  sufficiently  filled.  We  can- 
not give  up  believing  the  appearance,  until  we  understand 
why  it  should  appear.  This  demand  science  fulfils  ;  re- 
vealing holiness  through  uniformity ;  love  in  necessity  ; 
life  where  we  have  conceived  death,  and  death  where  we 
have  fondly  imagined  life. 

For  by  its  very  nature,  and  in  all  its  tendencies,  science 
implies,  and  prepares  us  to  recognise,  the  spirituality  of 
nature. 

Science  sets  aside  and  denies  the  authority  of  man's 
conceptions  ;  renders  him  familiar  with  the  thought  that 
the  universe  infinitely  exceeds  in  glory  and  majesty  all 
that  he  could  have  supposed.  Science  accustoms  men  to 
admit,  in  that  which  they  perceive,  the  presence  of  a  fact 
entirely  different,  as  when  it  teaches  them  to  recognise  in 
motion  the  cause  of  their  sensation  of  music  or  of  light ; 
making  them  understand  that  nature  is  altered  to  them  by 
their  own  condition.  Science  teaches  men  that  they  do 
naturally  attribute  to  nature  a  defect  which  is  their  own  ; 
their  own  arbitrariness  and  variableness,  for  which  observa- 
tion substitutes  a  law  fulfilled. 

Especially  does  science  teach  that  that  which  is  in  time 
[s  not,  but  is  only  form.  For  forms  only  change.  The 
fact  of  nature  cannot  be  in  time,  for  if  that  which  is  may 
cease  to  be,  science  has  no  certaintv. 


(  1 


84 


is. 


OF  BEING. 


[B*  I. 


Science  deals  with  dction  ;  it  recognsies  operation  only, 
and  knows  nothing  of  inert  substance  ;  the  doctrine  of 
inertia,  to  which  it  is  forced  to  have  recourse,  is  abhorrent 
to  its  nature.  Science  confirms  that  voice  which  says 
within  our  breasts  that  this  world  which  is  so  real  to  us  is 
but  a  show  ;  proving  that  all  phenomena  point  to  a  higher 
fact  which  is  not  in  them. 

By  science  man  is  cured  of  his  false  notions  of  the 
spiritual.  He  thinks  that  he  can  conceive  it  by  his  intel- 
lect :  he  is  taught  that  he  cannot.  He  learns  his  own  de- 
fect, that  the  true  spiritual  is  not  in  him. 

Science  is  prayer  and  answer.  Man  cries  to  God  : 
What  doest  Thou,  0  God,  that  heaven  glows  with  in- 
numerable orbs,  and  earth's  palpitating  bosom  bursts  into 
ceaseless  life  ?  What  doest  Thou  ?  And  from  the  Infinite 
Heart  the  still  small  voice  replies  :  I  love. 

Since  there  is  in  science  a  means  by  which  man's  natural 
convictions  in  respect  to  the  world  may  be  rectified,  there 
remains  no  more  reason  for  refusing  to  admit  them  to  be 
erroneous.  And  there  is  a  great  relief  to  the  mind  in  be- 
ing able  to  take  this  ground.  Man's  life  is  brought  into 
greater  harmony  and  consistency  with  itself.  For  it  is 
the  law  of  our  present  state  that  we  should  learn  truth 
through  illusion.  Nor  can  we,  indeed,  conceive  it  to  be 
otherwise,  without  an  entire  alteration  of  our  mental  con- 
stitution. Starting  from  ignorance,  error  must  have  prec- 
edence of  truth.  Our  whole  state  is  one  of  illusion  till 
we  are  delivered  from  it.  If  this  appear  strange  to  us 
and  unnatural,  it  is  proof  that  we  think  wrongly  of  the 
state  of  man.  Illusion  is  natural  if  this  be  not  man's  true 
life ;  if  for  true  manhood  he  have  to  be  made  different. 
In  fact,  man  is  under  illusions  which  include  all  his  being. 
For  does  he  not  find  pleasure  in  that  which  may  be  harm- 
ful ? — are  not  poisons  sometimes  pleasant  ? — are  not  most 


c.  v.] 


OF  BEING. 


85 


1/ 


Lf 


enticing  enjoyments  often  disastrous  and  evil?  But  to 
have  pleasure  in  a  thing  is  to  feel  it  good.  Man,  therefore, 
may  feel  that  to  be  good  which  is  not  good,  that  to  be  evil 
which  is  not  evil.  His  feeling  of  good  is  no  proof  of 
goodness.     He  is  under  illusion  as  to  good. 

And  does  not  man  often  necessarily  think  that  to  be  true 
which  is  not  true  ?  Does  not  his  ignorance  determine  his 
opinions  ?  That  which  he  must  think  true  may,  or  may 
not,  be  true.    He  is  under  illusion  as  to  truth. 

And  again.  Does  not  man  of  necessity  think  that  to 
be,  which  appears  to  him,  although  it  may  not  be  ?  He 
may  feel  that  to  be  which  is  not. 

But  if  man  is  by  his  nature  under  illusion  as  to  good, 
and  truth,  and  being,  how  should  this  be  his  Life  ? 

There  are  two  possible  views  which  may  be  taken  of 
the  universe,  conformably  with  the  appearance  :  two  inter- 
pretations which  may  be  put  upon  that  which  we  per- 
ceive and  are  conscious  of.  We  may  think,  as  we  have 
been  accustomed  to  think,  that  nature  is  a  dead  inert 
entity,  subject  to  mere  passive  law,  with  one  being  of 
spiritual  capacities  and  endowments,  and  he  mysteriously 
failing,  sinning,  evil,  falling  short  of  all  that  he  should  be. 
The  one  being,  worthy  to  be  called  a  Being,  marred,  and 
lost,  and  evil.  No  true  life  except  in  man,  and  in  him  so 
strangely  spoilt. 

Or  we  may  think  nature  perfect  in  spiritual  life.  An 
universe  full  of  being  that  is  true  being,  with  no  flaw,  with 
no  defect ;  but  in  respect  to  man  this  being  wanting. 
Man  the  one  defective  thing.  Not  that  the  universe  is 
imperfect  by  his  defect,  marred  by  his  failure.  That  is 
part  of  its  life.  Only  in  respect  to  him  is  there  defect. 
Only  relative,  not  absolute.  He  is  what  he  is,  because  life 
is  to  be  given  to  him ;  his  consciousness,  his  work,  his 


86 


OF  BEING 


[B.  I. 


c.  v.] 


OF  BEING. 


87 


action,  have  reference  to  a  life  that  is  to  be  bestowed. 
Viewed  in  relation  to  man  there  is  defect.  But  man's  de- 
fect must  be — must  be  for  tliis  human  love,  for  this  human 
life.  Without  this  inert  consciousness  self-sacrifice  could 
not  be,  and  in  self-sacrifice  is  creature  life.  Man  is  to 
have  true  being;  his  deadness  is  made  conscious,  as  it 
were,  to  himself,  that  he  may  be  delivered  from  it.  There- 
fore he  feels  it  to  be  in  all  that  he  perceives — therefore  the 
spiritual  world  is  a  dead  world  to  him,  the  universe  is  so 
mean,  and  he  so  lofty. 

According  to  our  conceptions,  there  is  a  rightness  in 
nature,  but    that    rightness    has    no    worth ;   man    has 
worth,  but  he  is  wrong.     Surely  we  are  right  in  feeling 
this  to  be  a  dark  and  painful  mystery.    But  where  have 
we  learnt  that  it  is  true?     What  evidence,  what  ground, 
what  right  have  we  to  assume  it  ?  That  is  the  phenomenon, 
that  is  what  is  felt  by  us.     If  it  be  so  painful  a  mystery, 
why  believe  it,  when  it  rests  only  on  the  assurance  that 
we  cannot  be  mistaken,  and  has  no  evidence  but  that  we 
feel  it  so  ?    For  if  we  be  wrong,  we  must  feel  wrongly,  if 
even  we  be  only  ignorant,  we  must  think  wrongly.     We 
do  not  rely  on  such  reasons,  on  such  evidence,  respecting 
the  simplest  and  most  ordinary  circumstance.     Our  feel- 
ings are  of  no  weight  unless  we  know  and  consider  also 
our  own  condition,  and  our  relation  to  that  which  is  their 
cause.     Why  should  we  act  against  all  experience  and  all 
reason,  and  assume  that  our  impressions  are  correct  while 
we  are  ignorant,  that  we  can  know  without  the  means  of 
knowing  ?     Why  explain  instead  of  investigating,  when 
our  explanation  fills  the  world  with  gloom  ?  The  evidence 
on  which  we  take  for  granted  that  the  universe  is  such  as 
we  think  it  would  not  avail  to  establish  the  very  slightest 
fact  in  our  daily  life  :  viz.,  that  it  seems  so  to  us,  without 
our  having  learnt,  or  inquired,  whether  there  were  any 


tl. 


w 


f 


circumstances    affecting    the    mode    in  which    it    seems 
.  to  us. 

That  man  should  be  under  illusion  only  shows  that  there 
is  defect  in  him.  It  is  but  the  necessary  consequence  of  a 
fact  well  known.  In  recognising  that  we  have  been  under 
illusion,  we  do  assent  to  an  admitted  principle,  which 
we  might  well  marvel  we  had  not  recognised  before. 
How  should  we,  who  without  investigation  cannot  know 
one  single  detail  of  the  course  of  nature,  know  without 
investigation  the  essence  of  the  whole  ?  How  should  we, 
who  are  deceived  and  under  illusions  constantly  in  respect 
to  matters  of  the  most  ordinary  import,  know  that  we 
could  not  have  been  deceived  in  respect  to  the  highest  and 
profoundest  of  all  ?  Is  it  not  arrogance,  the  very  extrem- 
ity of  pride  ?  Can  we  wonder  that,  asserting  confidently 
their  own  impressions,  men  wander  in  labyrinths,  and  can- 
not right  themselves  ? 

Man  may  take  for  himself  in  God^s  universe  a  lofty  or 
an  humble  place  :  the  one  living  being  or  the  one  wanting 
life.  He  may,  in  his  thoughts,  exalt  God  or  exalt  himself. 
In  either  case  his  natural  impression,  his  perception,  must 
be  as  it  is  ;  in  either  case  he  must  seem  to  himself  the  one 
living  being  in  a  world  of  death. 

It  is  a  simple  question,  it  might  seem  an  idle  and  merely 
speculative  one  ;  Is  the  perceived  inertness  nature's  or 
man's  ?  But  what  practical  issues  it  has,  what  a  deter- 
mining power  I  On  the  answer  to  that  question  depends 
the  entire  attitude  of  human  life.  Men  wait  to  be  deliv- 
ered from  illusion  :  they  wait  to  know  what  the  fact  is 
with  which  they  have  to  do. 


'I 


h  I 


BOOK   II. 


I 


OF    PHILOSOPHY. 

Thb  improvement  which  remains  to  be  effected  in  the  methods  of  philosophizing  can 
only  consist  in  performing  more  systematically  and  accurately  operations  with  which,  at 
least  in  their  elementary  form,  the  human  intellect  is  already  familiar. — J.  S.  Mill  :  SyS' 
tem  of  Logic. 


1 

I 


[89] 


i 


■•  1 


/ 


I 


CHAPTER    I. 


OP  MAN. 


lAUdable  faith  consists  in  resolving  to  receive  and  acknowledge  whatever  there  is  good 
ground  for  believing,  however  contrary  it  may  be  to  our  expectations,  wishes,  and  preju- 
dices ....  in  listening  to  reason  notwithstanding  all  the  strange  circumstances  that  tend 
to  bias  the  mind  the  other  way. — Archbishop  Whatelt.* 

It  might  be  thought  that  the  idea  of  a  deadness  in  man, 
affecting  his  condition  in  all  respects,  and  causing  his 
impressions  and  natural  convictions  to  differ  from  the 
truth,  would  present  difficulties  to  the  understanding,  and 
run  counter  to  the  feelings.  But  the  case  is  not  so.  The 
contrary  idea,  that  our  natural  impressions  must  be  taken 
as  true,  subjects  us  to  embarrassment  and  constraint. 
Clinging  to  these,  we  forge  chains  for  our  own  hands  ;  but 
to  understand  that  the  world  is  truly  different  from  that 
which  we  feel  it  to  be,  more  than  it  is  to  us,  sets  us  free. 
Surely  our  apprehension  of  the  universe  must  be  inade- 
quate ;  that  which  we  think,  no  more  equal  to  its  truth, 
than  that  which  our  senses  represent  to  us.  We  know 
that  the  universe  is  more  than  corresponds  to  our  concep- 
tion ;  what,  therefore,  can  be  more  natural  than  that  we 
should  distinguish  in  our  thought  between  that  which  truly 
exists  and  that  which  we  can  conceive  ?  It  can  be  no  hard 
task  to  recognise  in  a  new  bearing  the  familiar  truth  that 
our  condition  and  relation  to  things  determine  the  mode 


*  Ona  Future  State.    Sixth  Ed.,  pp.  326,  329. 
[91] 


I 


OP  MAX.  [b.  n, 

in  which  we  are  affected  by  them.  We  only  apply  to  the 
whole  that  mode  of  judging  which  we  have  already  applied 
to  particular  things.  We  do  not  consider  that  we  know 
even  the  size  or  shape  of  any  object  until  we  have  con- 
sidered how  far  we  are  distant  from  it ;  we  decide  on  the 
nature  of  nothing  that  we  see  or  feel  without  reflecting 
what  relations  we  bear  to  it,  what  our  own  condition  is. 
The  proposition,  therefore,  that  the  universe  is  not  truly 
physical  in  its  own  being,  but  is  rendered  so  to  us  by  man's 
condition,  involves  no  new  mode  of  thought  or  principle 
of  judging.  It  is  not  a  speculation,  but  a  question  of 
ordinary  evidence,  appealing  to  the  rules  of  judgment 
which  are  daily  applied  by  all  men,  and  used  more  reflect- 
ingly,  and  on  a  larger  scale,  by  men  practically  engaged 
in  scientific  work. 

For,  when  inquiry  is  made  respecting  the  world,  the 
primary  answer  is  the  same,  whether  it  be  held  that  the 
appearance  does  or  does  not  correspond  to  the  reality  : 
the  world  exists.  Then  there  arises  a  second  question : 
Has  that  which  exists  those  qualities  which  we  naturally 
suppose,  or  are  its  true  qualities  other  than  its  apparent 
ones  ?  Is  it,  or  is  it  not,  necessary  that  we  should  take 
into  consideration  ourselves  and  our  relations,  to  enable 
ns  rightly  to  appreciate  what  it  is?  Which  question 
indeed,  is  simply  whether  we  should  employ  the  means 
found  necessary  for  arriving  at  true  opinions  in  every  other 
case,  or  should  adopt  another  method,  against  which,  in 
every  other  case,  experience  testifies.  Shall  we  act  ac- 
cording to  experience  and  reason,  or  on  some  supposition 
to  which  these  general  guides  of  our  conduct  lend  no 
sanction  ? 

For  in  asserting  that  man's  own  condition  determines 
the  mode  in  which  he  is  impressed  by  that  which  is  apart 
from  him,  and  necessitates  his  thinking  it  to  be  other  than 


i 

I 


!  i 


C,    I.]  OP  MAN.  08 

it  is,  until  he  has  examined,  and  ascertained  what  the 
entire  circumstances  are,  we  do  but  recall  to  our  thoughts 
an  evident  and  admitted  principle.     All  men,  in  theory, 
are  willing  to  concede  that  our  impressions  of  nature  do 
not  correspond  strictly,  or  exactly,  to  the  fact.    The  least 
consideration,  indeed,  suffices  to  make  this  evident.    For 
the  relations  between  ourselves  and  the  fact  of  nature,  on 
which  the  impressions  it  must  produce  on  us  depend,  are 
not  known  to  us  beforehand,  and  the  law  of  our  perception, 
therefore,  demands  that  our  impressions  shall  be  corrected 
by  the  discovery  of  those  relations.   There  is  no  peculiarity 
or  exceptional  character  in  the  case.     Surely  it  is  as  natu- 
ral that  a  world  not  physical  should  he  physical  to  our 
perception  by  virtue  of  our  relation  to  it,  as  that  a  world 
not  at  rest  should  be  at  rest  to  our  perception.   In  judging 
of  the  size  of  anything,  or  of  its  condition  as  to  space,  we 
have  regard  to  our  distance,  or  relation  to  it  in  respect  to 
space  ;  in  judging  of  nature  in  respect  to  its  mode  of  exist- 
ence, we  must  have  regard  to  our  relation  to  it  in  respect 
to  our  mode  of  existence.    According  as  we  are,  so  will 
that  which  is  without  us  be  to  us. 

Therefore,  in  truth,  our  case  is  thus  with  respect  to 
nature  :  either  we  cannot  know  it  truly  as  it  is  at  all,  and 
must  be  hopelessly  under  illusion,  or  we  must  learn  to 
know  it  by  discovering  our  own  condition  in  relation  to  it, 
and  interpreting  the  appearance  it  presents  in  conformity 
therewith.  The  well-ascertained  laws  of  mental  operation 
do  not  permit  any  other  conclusion. 

It  is  necessary  thus  to  insist  at  length  upon  this  point 
because,  simple  as  it  is,  the  whole  question  of  the  spiritual- 
ity of  nature  is  contained  in  it.  If  this  principle  can  once 
be  clearly  seen  ;  if  it  be  felt  that  a  true  knowledge  of  what 
nature  is  must  depend  upon  a  recognition  of  our  own  rela- 
tion to  it,  as  in  every  other  case  right  knowledge  depends 


it 


Ifs 


OP  wm. 


[B.  II. 


upon  such  recognition  of  our  own  relation  ;  if  the  question 
can  be  brought  out  of  the  domain  of  darkness  and  assump- 
tion, and  be  treated  on  the  principles  called,  in  all  other 
cases,  those  of  common  sense,  the  entire  difficulty  is  over- 
come. For  the  necessity  of  regarding  the  apparent  inaction 
in  nature,  or  that  which  is  wanting  in  it,  as  the  result  of 
man's  condition,  hardly  needs  to  be  insisted  on  when  once 
it  is  recognised  that  a  regard  must  be  had  to  the  condition 
of  man,  and  that  some  part  of  the  apparent  quality,  or 
mode  of  existence,  of  nature  is  due  to  it. 

Further  proofs  of  this  position  will  present  themselves 
in  their  due  place,  but  in  truth  it  is  difficult  to  see  what 
other  proof  can  be  so  convincing  as  a  simple  statement  of 
the  alternatives.  For  the  inertness  that  we  must  recognise 
in  that  which  is  conceived  as  physical  (think  of  it  how  we 
will  or  in  whatever  light  we  may  endeavor  to  place  it), 
must  retain  the  character  of  being  an  absence  or  negation. 
Call  it  by  what  name  we  may,  we  cannot  escape  from  this : 
in  nature  as  it  is  perceived  by  us  there  is  something  that 
we  must  admit  to  be  of  a  negative  character.  Men  have 
named  it  inertness,  or  absence  of  action  ;  but  if  we  object 
to  this,  and  prefer  to  regard  it  in  any  other  way,  its  essen- 
tial character  will  not  alter,  it  remains  still  an  absence. 
Therefore  we  must  either  admit  a  negation  as  absolutely 
existing  ;  must  conceive  an  universal  inertness  or  absence 
as  in  some  way  created  ;  or  else  that  nature  is  not  such  as 
we  feel  it  to  be.  But  is  not  the  appearance  of  an  universal 
absence,  or  defect,  simply  the  way  in  which  we  learn  that 
we  do  not  perceive  that  which  is  truly  existing  ?  When 
we  examine  and  reflect  upon  the  facts  of  the  external  world, 
we  are  compelled  to  think  of  them  as  involving  an  absence 
of  something :  what  can  this  mean,  but  that  we  do  not 
perceive  that  which  truly  is  ?  An  absence  or  defect  may 
well  be  in  that  which  we  perceive,  if  our  perception  do  not 


ii 


I 


1 


( 


c.  I.] 


OF  MAN. 


95 


correspond  to  the  fact ;  but  how  can  it  be  in  the  absolute 
fact  itself?     Can  we  conceive  a  more  exact  contradiction 
than  that  an  universal  negation  exists  ?  or  that  an  absence 
has  been  created  ?    To  hold  fast  to  our  natural  impression, 
and  refuse  to  correct  it  by  admitting  that  there  is  more  in 
the  fact  of  the  universe  than  we  have  supposed,  drives  us 
into  the  most  obviously  impossible  positions.     The  idea 
of  a  true  instead  of  an  apparent  inertness  in  nature,  or 
that  the  universe  truly  is  not  active,  or  physical,  proves 
itself  impossible  the  moment  it  is  looked   into  :    only 
through  taking  for  granted  and  not  inquiring  can  we  have 
rested  in  that  opinion.     Whatever  the  truth  may  be,  that 
cannot  be  true.     And  then  the  other  question  follows  :  If 
nature  be  not  truly  physical,  why  is  it  physical  to  u&? 
What  condition  of  ours  is  it  that  makes  the  not-inert  to 
be  felt  as  inert?    Evidently  it  is  some  condition  that 
makes  the  existence  around  us  to  be- less  to  us  than  it  truly 
is.     It  is  a  non-perception  on  our  part;  an  ignorance. 
That  which  truly  is  in  nature  is  not  to  us.    We  introduce 
the  negation,  the  absence;  the  negative  element,  be  it 
what  it  may,  is  ours  ;  we  must  search  for  it  within.     This 
at  least  may  be  held  certain.     And  how  simple  it  is !     We 
knew  that  the  truth  of  nature  must  be  different  from  our 
conception  of  it,  because  that  conception  cannot  be  ade- 
quate ;  now  we  know  one  respect  in  which  they  must 
differ.     Our  conception  is  of  an  inactive  nature,  though 
nature  cannot  be  inactive.    Our  conception  is  therefore 
inadequate  in  this  respect.     The  admitted  general  prin- 
ciple receives  a  partial  application. 

And  in  this  all  is  involved  ;  it  should  not  be  necessary 
to  add  anything  more.  Let  the  conclusion  be  held  fast 
for  a  moment  and  considered.  Defect  in  man  causes  the 
universe  to  appear  to  him  such  as  it  does  appear,  to  be  to 
him  defective.    How  simple  is  the  statement— nay,  how 


96 


OF  MAN. 


[B.  II. 


self-evident,  commonplace  and  trite.  Nothing  can  be  less 
new,  less  doubted.  In  his  heart  no  man  thinks  otherwise ; 
by  the  very  necessities  of  language  no  man  can  speak 
otherwise.  Yet  how  strong  an  illusion  holds  us.  Against 
all  this,  which  we  know,  and  are  so  well  assured  of,  we 
cannot  help  maintaining  that  the  universe  is  such  as  it  ap- 
pears. It  is  a  strange  contradiction  ;  our  nature  seems 
divided  against  itself.  That  which  in  theory  we  give  up 
most  readily,  in  practice  we  cling  to  as  if  for  our  very  life. 
We  say  willingly,  that  which  exists  is  not  sucli  as  it  ap- 
pears ;  but  we  dare  not  say,  that  which  appears  is  not  that 
which  exists.  Why  is  it  that  we  arc  so  mocked,  so  bound  ? 
Is  it  a  mere  solecism,  a  contradiction  in  our  nature,  a  mys- 
tery we  shall  never  solve  ?  By  no  means.  There  is  no 
solecism,  no  contradiction,  nothing  but  that  which  ought 
to  be.  If  the  case  were  not  as  it  is,  there  could  not  be 
that  defect  on  man's  part,  which  is  the  secret  of  the  whole. 
For  what  is  the  source  of  the  embarrassment  but  this : 
that  the  things  which  appear  are  real  to  us,  that  which  is 
not  truly  the  fact  is  the  fact  to  us,  determines  and  controls 
our  being.  Our  existence,  as  we  are,  is  in  that  which  is 
inert.  Here  is  the  contradiction.  Our  reason  and  our 
feeling  are  at  strife.  We  know,  when  we  reflect,  that  the 
things  that  appear  cannot  be  the  things  that  are ;  yet 
we  feel  them  to  be — they  are  to  us.  That  is  our  defect. 
That  constitutes  our  world  physical ;  makes  the  phenomen- 
on the  reality. 


Thus  there  must  have  arisen  the  perplexity  that  em- 
barrasses us,  and  makes  us  say  :  *  It  is  impossible  to  under- 
stand these  things,  and  therefore  we  should  not  inquire, 
but  must  fall  back  upon  the  infallibility  of  our  own  im- 
pressions.' We  feel  that  these  things  which  are  the  objects  . 
of  sense  certainly  arc,  do  truly  and  really  exist,  although 


c.  I.] 


OF  MAN. 


97 


their  existence  can  be  disproved  :  but  so  we  should  feel ;  so 
the  defect  of  man's  being  reveals  itself.  And  the  intellectual 
difficulty  with  which  men  have  struggled  so  long  and  so 
vainly,  as  to  the  existence  of  the  external  world,  arises  in 
the  same  way.  We  have  not  recognised  the  defect,  in  re- 
spect to  man,  which  causes  us  to  feel  as  we  do.  Nor,  in- 
deed, could  we,  until  the  problem  had  been  worked  out. 
For  the  discovery  of  that  defect,  the  knowledge  of  man's 
own  condition,  is  the  result  achieved  by  the  work  that  has 
been  done  in  ignorance  of  it.  Even  as  the  knowledge  of 
man's  motion  in  space,  which  is  the  key  to  the  heavens,  is 
the  result  of  the  work  which  was  done  in  ignorance  of  it. 

In  all  this  there  has  been  nothing  peculiar  or  unlike  the 
rest  of  our  experience.    It  can  appear  so  to  us,  only  so  far 
as  our  thoughts  have  been  merely  speculations,  and  not 
based  on  rational  inquiry.    By  means  of  the  fact  that  con- 
ditions affecting  ourselves  modify  our  perception,  those 
conditions  are  made  known  to  us.    No  arrangement  in 
nature  is  more  beneficent,  or  better  adapted  to  its  end, 
tlian  this.     Our  own  condition  (which  it  is  in  some  sense 
the  most  important  of  all  things  for  us  to  know,  not  only 
because  of  its  immediate  interest,  but  also  because  such 
knowledge  is  the  basis  of  all  right  apprehension  of  other 
things)  is  revealed  to  us  by  means  of  its  effect  upon  our 
perception.     If  that  which  properly  belongs  to  us  had  not 
this  effect  on  the  appearance  of  that  which  is  without  us, 
if  our  own  state  were  not  thus  made  apparent  to  ourselves, 
and  brought  within  the  sphere  of  observation  and  inquiry, 
we  could  never  know  it,  we  should  have  no  means  of  learn- 
ing it.     By  study  of  that  which  is  without  us,  we  must 
learn  what  we  ourselves  are.    The  steadfast  stars  alone 
could  reveal  to  man  the  restless  circuit  of  his  little  globe. 
He  sees  them  revolving  round  the  earth  that  he  may  know 
his  own  motion  and  its  cause.    So  the  spiritual  universe, 
5 


98 


OF  MAN. 


[B.  II. 


not  spiritual  to  human  apprehension,  reveals  the  defective- 
ness of  man.  The  spiritual  is  felt  by  him  as  physical,  he 
feels  the  appearance  as  the  fact,  that  he  may  know  his  own 
deadness,  what  and  whence  it  is.* 

Nor  is  there  in  this  representation  anything  speculative 
or  unpractical.  Let  the  principle  be  tested  by  a  few 
familiar  instances  in  which  its  true  bearing  may  be  more 
easily  appreciated.  We  are  apt  to  say,  we  see  and  feel 
these  things  to  be  physical ;  we  know  them  to  be  so : 
meaning  that  the  very  facts  that  truly  exist  are  so.  But 
do  we  not  see  the  moon  to  be  briglit  ?  Do  we  therefore 
know  it  to  be  so  ?  On  the  contrary,  we  know  it  not  to  be 
so,  and  find  no  difficulty  in  apprehending  the  truth,  because 
we  recognise  the  laws  of  our  perception.  But  of  old,  be- 
fore astronomy  was  rightly  understood,  men  who  saw  the 
moon  bright  could  not  have  been  made  to  understand  or 
believe  that  it  was  not  so.  They  would  have  said  :  We 
see  it  bright,  we  know  it  is  so.  In  all  cases  of  perception 
we  must  feel  convinced  that  the  fact  corresponds  with  our 
impression  until  we  know  the  conditions  which  cause  our 
perception  to  be  erroneous.  A  straight  rod,  partly  immers- 
ed in  water,  looks  bent,  and  so  we  should  believe  it,  were 
we  not  able  to  correct  our  experience  by  reflection. 

By  judging  of  the  being  of  the  world  we  must  take  into 
consideration  the  state  of  man.  This  is  no  abstruse  idea  ; 
it  is  at  the  farthest  remove  from  being  speculative.  When 
we  place  our  hands,  first  in  very  cold  water,  and  then  in 
water  less  cold,  the  latter  feels  warm.  We  should  natu- 
rally say  :  I  feel  it  warm,  it  is  warm  :  but  would  it  be  an 
abstruse  or  speculative  thing  to  reflect  that  we  must  think 
of  the  previous  condition  of  our  hands  ;   and  that  the 


*  It  is  true  the  atare  are  not  absolutely  steadfast.    They  are  so,  however, 
relatively,  and  for  the  purpoee  of  the  illustration. 


C.  I.] 


OF  MAN. 


99 


water  was  not  warm,  although  we  felt  it  so  ?  Whatever 
it  may  be  to  take  into  account  what  man  is  when  we  would 
judge  what  nature  is,  it  is  at  least  not  to  be  unpractical ; 
it  is  not  to  deviate  from  the  rules  and  maxims  of  ordinary 
life  ;  it  is  not  to  obscure  a  plain  question  by  subtleties. 

Still  less  is  it  to  lose  or  be  deprived  of  anything.  A 
feeling  is  apt  to  take  possession  of  us,  and  one  from  which 
we  cannot  immediately  escape,  to  the  effect,  that  if  the 
appearance  of  the  universe  be  not  such  as  the  fact  is,  then 
there  is  less  than  there  would  otherwise  be ;  as  if  some 
*  existence '  would  be  set  aside.  A  little  reflection  frees  us 
from  this  embarrassment,  which  indeed  is  not  peculiar  to 
this  case,  but  arises  continually  with  the  advance  of  knowl- 
edge. The  change  of  an  incorrect  opinion  for  a  true  one 
always  involves  the  loss  of  something  that  was  connected 
with  the  former.  An  idolater,  in  learning  better  to  under- 
stand the  Divine  nature,  loses  his  gods  of  flesh  and  blood, 
his  solid,  substantial  divinities  ;  and  finds  it,  at  first,  diffi- 
cult to  understand  that  he  has  truly  incurred  no  loss. 
Ignorance  necessitates  suppositions  which  knowledge  sets 
aside,  but  meanwhile  those  suppositions  have  gained  a  hold 
upon  the  thoughts  as  if  they  were  realities,  and  the  parting 
with  them  is  felt  as  a  deprivation.  The  slave,  accustomed 
to  his  bonds,  misses  his  shackles  in  his  first  days  of  free- 
dom. What  loss  is  it  to  give  up  the  less  for  the  greater, 
to  loosen  the  grasp  upon  the  transient  to  lay  hold  upon 
the  eternal,  to  change  that  which  appears  to  us  for  that 
which  IS  ?  How  can  our  thinking  differently  of  nature 
alter  anything  in  it :  how  make  it  less  ?  What  can  we 
lose  by  knowing  better  ?  And  especially,  how  can  it  be  a 
loss  to  feel  that  nature  is  more  than  we  have  thought,  to 
understand  that  which  appears  as  a  want  in  it  is  from  our 
ignorance  ?  of  what  can  this  deprive  us  ? 

What  we  miss,  and  feel  to  be  taken  away  from  us,  as  if 


100 


OF  MAN. 


[B.  II. 


it  were  a  possession,  is  the  necessity  of  making  supposi- 
tions, of  inferring  certain  things.  We  need  not  any  more 
suppose  what  we  have  hitherto  been  compelled  to  suppose. 
The  opinion  which  necessitated  those  suppositions  being 
changed,  they  are  no  longer  necessary.  We  have  altered 
our  view,  and  perceive  that  the  facts  demand  a  different 
interpretation.     That  is  all. 

Nature  is  more  than  we  thought.  And  man  is  more 
also  ;  simply  our  view  is  enlarged  :  the  infinite  wisdom 
and  majesty  of  God,  and  of  His  universe,  are  more  worthily 
revealed  to  us.  We  thought  we  were  more  on  a  level  with 
them  than  we  are.  We  brought  them  down  to  ourselves  ; 
now  we  seek  to  rise  to  them.  Does  it  make  man  less, 
does  it  not  rather  at  once  exalt  humanity  and  fill  us  with 
humility,  to  understand  that  the  life  of  man  is  not  yet  ours; 
that  true  manhood  is  more  than  we  possess,  more  than  we 
have  thought :  what  loss  is  it  to  know  that  we  are  want- 
ing :  is  it  not  infinite  and  blessed  gain,  the  first  condition 
of  all  betterness  ?  What  loss  to  know  that  God  will  not, 
cannot  leave  us  as  we  are,  but  will  put  life  within  us,  raising 
us  up  from  death  of  self-gratification,  and  self-regard,  and 
making  us  meet  denizens  of  that  eternal  world  in  which 
man  now  dwells,  though  sightless,  senseless,  and  unpartici- 
pating ;  thinking  amid  the  universal  bounty  how  much 
he  himself  can  get  ? 


ii„ 


CHAPTER    11. 


OF  THE  WOELD. 


Oovetousness  which  is  idolatry. 


Willingly  we  admit  that  the  universe  is  more  than  is  em- 
braced in  our  conception  of  it ;  that  there  is  unknown 
being  in  that  which  surrounds  us  with  these  inexpressible 
enchantments.  The  infinitude  of  space  made  awful  by  un- 
numbered worlds,  the  things  that  subserve  our  use  and 
pleasure,  the  forms  of  wonder  and  of  beauty  that  life 
puts  on  all  around  us, — truly  these  are  more  than  we 
know,  they  are  higher  than  any  thought  of  ours.  But 
surely  they  are.  When  I  am  looking  at  the  sun  is  there 
not  the  sun  that  I  am  looking  at ;  when  I  touch  a  tree  is 
there  not  the  tree  ?  How  can  I  look  at  or  touch  a  thing 
if  it  does  not  exist  ?  Men  are  not  to  be  talked  out  of  their 
most  necessary  and  certain  convictions.  Reason  does  not 
avail  against  consciousness. 

This  is  right  and  good,  a  most  necessary  position  to  be 
maintained.  If  men  could  have  been  induced  to  give  up 
this  conviction,  they  could  never  have  known  that  which 
is  of  the  utmost  concern  to  them  to  know  ;  never  have 
learnt  in  how  true  and  absolute  a  sense  man  wants  life,  or 
have  discovered  the  fact  that  in  truth  exists,  and  why  they 
are  affected  by  it  as  they  are. 

It  is  certain  that  the  things  that  are  perceived  by  sense 
exist  to  us  ;  no  question  can  be  raised  respecting  them  that 
does  not  touch  ourselves  also.    If  they  are  not,  then  are 

[101] 


102 


OF  THE  WORLD. 


[B.  II. 


we  most  woefully  deceived.  For  not  only  are  we  com- 
pelled of  necessity,  and  without  any  reflection  of  which  we 
can  be  conscious,  to  feel  convinced  that  they  truly  exist, 
but  all  the  circumstances  connected  with  them  agree  with 
this  conviction.  We  perceive  them  or  do  not  perceive 
them,  or  we  perceive  them  with  variations  of  appearance, 
precisely  in  conformity  with  the  results  which  should  en- 
sue from  their  existence.  We  can  act  on  them  and  pro- 
duce effects  according  to  ascertainable  laws  ;  effects  which 
react  upon  ourselves  :  whether  there  be  fire  or  not,  at  least 
it  burns  us  if  we  touch  it.  Or  if  we  deny  the  existence  of 
these  things,  what  foundation  have  we  for  affirming  any- 
thing ?  Of  what  then  can  we  be  sure  ?  Not  of  our  own 
existence,  for  that  is  inseparably  bound  up  with  our  percep- 
tion of  these  things  ;  not  of  anything  of  which  conscious- 
ness informs  us,  for  its  authority  has  received  a  fatal  shock. 

This  is  good  argument.  It  has  been  proved  valid  by  the 
result,  for  it  has  convinced  mankind.  We  cannot  put  aside 
our  natural  conviction  respecting  the  world,  leaving 
our  natural  conviction  respecting  man,  intact.  Yet  an 
alteration  of  our  natural  conviction  respecting  the  world 
is  necessary  :  it  cannot  be  avoided.  Nature  cannot  be 
that  which  we  have  necessarily  supposed  it  to  be.  Exami- 
nation proves  those  natural  convictions  false,  and  we  know 
they  cannot  be  true,  because  they  have  been  formed  with- 
out the  requisite  means  of  judging. 

Especially  is  it  demonstrated  that  our  impression  re- 
specting the  world,  necessary  though  it  be,  cannot  be  a  true 
one,  because  it  has  been  found  that  it  can  only  be  main- 
tained by  forbidding  inquiry,  and  by  the  assertion  of  a 
sovereign  certainty  in  the  impression  itself.  It  should  need 
no  other  evidence  to  prove  the  falsity  of  any  opinion  than 
that  it  requires  such  a  basis.  Yet  we  may  see  that  it  was 
necessary  that  this  position  should  have  been  taken,  and  that 


c.  II.] 


OF  THE   WORLD. 


103 


V 


men  should  have  asserted  that  our  idea  of  the  world  must  be 
true,  because  with  our  amount  of  knowledge  (that  is,  in  our 
ignorance)we  were  obliged  to  believe  it.  Contradictory 
as  it  is  to  all  the  principles  by  which  man  attains  deliver- 
ance from  error,  he  could  have  thought  in  no  other  way. 
For  to  think  otherwise  demands  that  he  should  recognise 
deadness  in  himself.  The  question  which  is  raised  respect- 
inff  nature  cannot  be  solved  on  intellectual  grounds  alone. 
It  is  also  a  moral  question,  it  touches  of  necessity  the 
spiritual.  To  ask  :  why  that  which  is  not  the  fact  is  the 
fact  to  us  ;  why  we  perceive  and  feel  the  world  as  we  do, 
if  that  which  we  so  perceive  and  feel  be  not  the  very  fact 
that  exists  ;  brings  us  into  the  presence  of  the  profoundest 
religious  questions.  Life,  death,  eternity,  all  things  divine 
and  of  deepest  moment,  have  a  stake  in  the  decision.  Till 
man  know  that  this  state  is  not  his  true  life,  he  cannot 
allow  that  the  world  which  is  so  real  to  him  is  not  the  true 
reality.  Argument  appeals  to  him  in  vain.  He  replies  : 
*  I  feel  it,  my  consciousness  declares  it  is  so.'  Nor  does  it 
avail  to  point  out  that  every  false  opinion  has  the  same 
grounds  to  sustain  itself  upon  ;  that  all  appearances  are 
necessarily  believed  true  until  increasing  knowledge  ex- 
plains them  :  he  will  not  believe  himself  deceived  until  he 
recognise  that  he  wants  his  true  life.  Nor  should  he.  The 
two  convictions  must  come  together.  For  man  to  believe 
that  he  feels  that  to  be  which  is  not,  and  at  the  same  time 
not  to  see  that  there  is  a  fatal  defect  in  himself,  ought  to 
be  impossible. 

Yet  that  the  argument  for  the  true  existence  of  the 
things  perceived  by  sense  is  of  no  validity  may  be  easily 
made  evident.  It  rests  on  a  confounding  that  which  it  is 
necessary  for  us  to  infer,  with  that  which  is  true.  It  is 
doubtless  necessaiy  for  us  to  infer  many  things  respecting 
the  world  when,  with  our  amount  of  knowledge,  we  reflect 


BMitieiil 


104 


OF  THE   WORLD. 


[B.  II. 


concerning  it.  Among  these  necessary  inferences  seems  to 
be  this,  that  the  universe  exists  in  the  way  that  it  appears 
to  exist,  or  having  such  qualities  as  we  feel  it  to  have. 
But  this  inference  gains  no  certainty  by  virtue  of  its  neces- 
sity :  it  may  be  the  result  only  of  our  ignorance.  Nay,  it 
is  not  even  in  strictness  necessary  ;  for  all  the  impressions 
upon  which  we  found  the  inference  might  be  produced  in 
other  ways,  and  unknown  conditions  of  our  own  would 
necessitate  our  perceiving  in  a  way  that  should  not  corres- 
pond to  the  truth.*  Evidently  the  argument  for  the  ex- 
istence of  things  as  they  appear,  or  as  we  have  necessarily 
believed  them  to  be,  rests  on  the  conviction  that  we  are  not 
under  illusion,  and  has  no  other  ground  whatever.     But 


*  It  is  commonly  argued,  that  from  the  feeliDgs  we  have,  we  necessarily 
believe  the  existence  of  things  which  correspond  to  our  conceptions.  This 
may  be  true :  indeed  it  is  true  until  we  accept  the  idea  of  a  defect  of  being 
in  man,  which  causes  things  to  be  to  him  other  than  they  are.  But  the  ar- 
gument itself  is  strangely  suicidal.  For  if  our  having  certain  feelings  makes 
our  belief  of  these  things  necessary,  then  it  is  clear  that  we  should  have 
that  belief  equally,  in  whatever  way  those  feelings  were  produced.  And 
we  know  that  those  feelings  might  be  produced  in  other  ways  than  by  the 
true  existence  of  the  things  we  are  thus  made  to  believe ;  in  dreams,  for  ex- 
ample. Even  if  wo  may  not  say  that  the  existence  of  those  things  could  not 
produce  the  feelings,  it  is  certain  that  there  cannot  be  shown  the  least  adap- 
tation in  them  to  do  so.  But,  in  any  case,  to  show  that  our  belief  in  the  ex- 
istence of  things  corresponding  to  our  conceptions  necessarily  follows  from 
our  having  certain  feelings  takes  away  all  the  proof  of  their  existence  which 
those  feelings  might  be  supposed  to  give;  if  we  account  for  our  having  those 
feelings  in  any  way,  we  account  equally  for  our  necessary  belief  Is  it  not 
better  to  say,  that  something  not  corresponding  to  our  conceptions  is  the 
cause  of  our  feelings,  and  that  we  necessarily  believe  as  we  do  because  our 
conceptions  are  necessarily  inadequate  ?  The  inadequacy  of  our  conceptions 
of  nature  is  denied  in  aasertmg  the  authority  of  that  necessary  belief  of  ours. 
We  ought  from  our  feeling  and  our  necessity  of  believing,  in  our  ignorance,  as 
we  do,  to  infer  the  existence  of  something  different  from  that  which  we  con- 
ceive; something  more:  something  above  our  power  of  conceiving,  and 
therefor©  made  less  to  ua  than  it  truly  is,  by  virtue  of  our  own  state  ofl^ein'' 


C.  II.] 


OF  THE   WORLD. 


105 


whether  we  arc  under  illusion  or  not  is  the  very  question 
to  be  solved.  To  be  under  illusion  is  only  to  be  ignorant 
of  some  essential  circumstance.  It  is  affirmed  that  we  are 
under  illusion,  that  this  is  right  and  natural,  and  proper  to 
our  state,  and  that  it  is  of  the  utmost  moment  to  us  to  un- 
derstand that  we  are  so,  for  thereby  we  learn  our  own  con- 
dition. How  should  there  be  a  reluctance  to  admit  that 
we  have  been  under  illusion  ?  The  discovery  of  that  fact 
is  always  the  best  thing  that  can  befall  us.  Ignorance 
means  being  under  illusion ;  all  advance  in  knowledge  con- 
sists in  the  discovery  that  we  have  been  so.  If  this  illu- 
sion, that  the  universe  is  such  as  it  appear,  be  the  greatest 
of  all,  differing  from  all  others  in  being  not  intellectual 
merely,  but  affecting  our  life,  ourself,  our  very  being,  then 
is  the  discovery  of  it  the  greater  gain.  A  knowledge 
that  we  have  been  under  that  illusion,  and  the  escape 
from  it,  were  a  better  thing  than  the  escape  from  all  others. 
It  were  to  have  a  juster  knowledge  of  the  very  being  of 
the  world  in  which  we  are. 

What  a  light  it  throws  upon  our  life,  what  a  harmony 
it  introduces  into  this  tangled  and  discordant  scene,  that 
we  should  be  feeling  wrongly  ;  that  the  universe  should 
not  BE  that  which  it  is  to  us  !  The  mystery  of  the  world 
is  gone.  If  we  feel  wrongly,  and  think  wrongly,  putting 
that  which  seems  for  that  which  is,  then  do  we  understand 
ourselves.  '  Surely  man  walketh  in  a  vain  show.'  Is  not 
that  the  secret  of  this  strange  life  of  ours,  that  might  be 
80  beautiful,  so  Godlike,  but  will  not  be :  the  raging  pas- 
sions, the  vainly  striving  will,  the  expectation  strained  to 
the  uttermost,  to  end  in  discontent,  the  hands  for  ever 
grasping,  never  full  ?  The  dark  problem  of  humanity  re- 
solves itself  in  gladness,  the  universe  springs  up  in  light 
and  joy.  Man  must  have  a  different  life,  that  which  is 
being  the  reality  to  him.    Here  will  bo  the  remedy  for  our 


5» 


106 


OF  THE  WORLD. 


[B.  IL 


ills  :  tne  cure  for  our  diseases.  Life  poured  into  us :  God's 
own  Life  flowing  within  us  as  it  flows  around  :  the  glad 
current  bounding  through  our  languid  veins,  turning  the 
coldness  at  our  hearts  to  love,  destroying  the  emptiness 
within,  that  strives  to  fill  itself  with  vanity,  by  an  eternal 
spring  of  blessing. 

Man's  life  to  phenomena,  to  things  that  are  not,  is  his 
want  of  life.  That  we  feel  this  state  to  be  one  of  life  is 
no  evidence  that  it  is  so.  Who  is  so  certain  of  his  knowl- 
edge as  he  who  most  is  ignorant  ?  He  above  all  feels  and 
thinks  he  knows,  and  just  as  he  gains  knowledge  does  he 
become  conscious  of  his  want  of  it.  Why  should  not  he 
who  most  wants  life  feel  and  think  himself  most  possessed 
of  it?  Why  should  not  a  growing  life  more  and  more 
make  us  conscious  of  want  of  life?  When  man's  life  is 
perfect,  phenomena  shall  no  more  be  to  him  realities  as 
they  are  now,  but  as  they  truly  arc,  phenomena  only,  forms 
and  appearances  of  a  diff'erent  fact  in  relation  to  which 
alone  his  life  shall  be.  We  shall  know  that  unknown  es- 
sence, partake  that  now  unapproachable  existence.  We 
may  understand  what  it  must  be  to  be  in  the  eternal,  in 
the  spiritual  world  :  that  which  is  shall  be  to  us  the  reality 
of  our  existence,  shall  be  to  us  then,  as  these  inert  phenom- 
ena are  now,  the  facts  by  which  our  life  and  being  are 
determined. 

We  naturally  ask, — what  are  these  things  that  we  see 
and  touch,  which  make  the  conditions  of  our  physical  life  ; 
our  own  bodies,  and  the  external  objects  with  which  we  are 
related  by  their  means  ?  No  question  is  more  important. 
But  it  is  already  answered.  These  things  are  phenomena ; 
the  things  that  appear.  They  are  that  which  is  to  our 
sense  and  to  our  intellect.  Brought  into  relation  with  the 
fact  that  truly  exists,  we  perceive  such  things  ;  being  such 


C.  IL] 


OF  THE  WOKLD. 


107 


as  we  are,  and  so  circumstanced,  we  are  impressed  in  this 
way.  Admirable  is  the  name  which  science  has  given  them 
of  phenomena.    They  are  the  forms  under  which  the  fact 
IS  perceived  by  us ;  the  appearances,  or  things  that  are 
seen  and  felt,  by  the  study  of  which  we  huve  to  learn  both 
what  that  fact  is  and  what  we  are.   We  cannot  affirm  that 
they  truly  are,  because  that  would  be  to  deny  that  true 
existence  which  is  above  our  knowledge  or  conception 
and  the  existence  of  which  is  the  sole  reason  that  these 
things  are  perceived  by  us.     Even  so,  to  affirm  that  there 
IS  a  disc  in  the  heavens  would  be  to  deny  the  moon.    This 
physical  temporal  world  is  the  appearance  to  us  of  the 
world  that  IS,  the  eternal  and  spiritual  world ;  and  we 
believe  it  to  be  not  an  appearance  only,  but  itself  a  true 
existence,  simply  because  we  do  not  know  that  true  and 
absolute  fact  which  causes  it  te  appear.     We  are  in  the 
eternal  world,  and  thus  we  feel  it.     We  perceive  the  ap- 
pearance  te  us  of  the  eternal  world,  and  call  it  the  world 
that  IS.     But  man  is  wiser  than  his  own  thought.     He 
cannot  rest  in  ^this  belief.     Science,  examining  this  world, 
which  he  feels  and  believes  te  be,  pronounces  it  but  an 
appearance,  calls  it  phenomenal,  affirms  that  the  true  Being 
of  it  is  unknown.    Hence  comes  the  difficulty,  the  logical 
perplexity,  the  necessity  that  men  have  been  under  at  once 
of  affirming  this  (which  we  conceive)  to  be,  and  yet  that 
the  true  existence  of  nature  is  not  to  be  conceived.    This 
IS  the  apparent  world,  as  at  once  opposed  to  and  depen- 
dent  upon  the  world  that  is.     As  we  understand  that  the 
appearances  we  perceive  by  sight  indicate  something  dif- 
lerent,  which  we  conceive  but  cannot  see ;  so  we  should 
understand  that  the  phenomena  we  conceive  by  thought 
indicate  a  different  existence,  which  we  may  know,  but 
cannot  conceive.    And  as  that  which  is  but  phenomenon, 
though  by  our  defectiveness  it  is  felt  by  us  as  existing, 


108 


OF  THE    WORLD. 


[B.  II. 


does  not  truly  exist,  so  of  necessity  it  cannot  truly  act. 
It  differs  from  that  which  is  by  being  inactive.  It  is  neces- 
sarily found  to  be  inert.  Thus  a  definite  and  intelligible 
difference  is  recognised  between  the  phenomenon  and  the 
fact,  and  we  are  able  clearly  and  consciously  to  distinguish 
between  them.  While  the  true  being  of  nature  is  regarded 
simply  as  unknown,  the  phenomenon  must  be  practically 
regarded  as  the  fact.  But  to  know  that  the  phenomenon 
alone  is  inert,  and  that  the  fact  is  spiritual,  entirely  alters 
our  conception  of  the  world.  The  phenomenon  takes  its 
right  place  in  our  thought 

These  physical  and  transient  things  are  the  mode  under 
which  we  perceive  the  eternal.  They  present  it  to  us. 
From  them,  first  recognising  the  want  of  life  in  man,  we 
learn  what  the  eternal  is.  For  well  may  these  things  that 
are  seen  teach  us  the  unseen.  Worthily  do  they  fulfil  their 
task.  Image  and  symbol  of  love.  Love,  holiness,  sacri- 
fice, law  perfectly  fulfilled  in  perfect  liberty,  self  utterly 
cast  out :  these  are  the  fact  of  which  nature  speaks  to  us, 
which  she  images  visibly  before  our  eyes.  These  things 
are  the  forms  under  which  the  fact  is  perceived  by  man. 
The  forms  are  in  time,  the  fact  is  eternal ;  the  forms  are 
inert,  the  fact  is  spiritual ;  the  forms  appear,  are  felt,  are 
conceived,  the  fact  appears  not,  nor  is  to  be  conceived, 
but  IS. 


II 


CHAPTER    III. 
OP  idealism:  and  the  proper  meaning  op  the  word 

MATTER. 

We  first  raise  a  dust  and  then  complain  that  we  cannot  see. 

Bishop  Bebkkuet. 

In  nature,  when  one  thing  ceases  another  takes  its  place. 
For  example :  if  wood  be  burnt,  it  is  resolved  into  smoke 
and  ashes.  And  these  different  things  we  regard  as  forms 
of  the  same  essential  existence.  Thus  it  is  easy  to  sec  the 
necessity  of  the  conception  of  matter  :  while  all  particular 
things  change  or  cease,  there  must  be  something  which 
does  not  cease  ;  something  of  which  all  these  things  that 
change  are  forms,  a  '  substratum,'  which  is  the  same  in  all. 
This  conception,  that  the  world  consists  of  an  unchanging 
matter,  is  a  verv  obvious  and  natural  one.  It  could  not 
but  have  occurred  to  men,  and  have  been  commended  to 
them  by  its  apparent  self-evidence  and  necessity.  Nor 
does  it  seem  easy  to  understand,  at  first,  how  the  existence 
of  matter  should  have  been  called  in  question,  and  have 
become  the  watchword  of  an  apparently  interminable 
strife.  For  the  dispute  concerning  matter  shows  no  sign 
of  coming  to  an  end.  In  spite  of  all  attempts  to  close  it, 
or  to  represent  it  as  compromised,  it  is  incessantly  re- 
newed. Men  of  science,  as  well  as  metaphysicians, 
descend  into  the  arena.* 

♦  See  especially  Professor  Faraday  ;  A  Speculation  concerning  Matter : 
and  Oersted  ;   The  Soul  in  Nature, 

[109] 


110 


OF  IDEALISM. 


[B.  II. 


But  this  curious  episode  in  man's  history  becomes  quite 
intelligible,  when  it  is  viewed  from  the  true  vantage 
ground.  We  may  see  why  matter  must  be  asserted,  why 
it  must  be  denied  ;  why  the  denial  of  it  seems  ridiculous, 
yet  cannot  be  refuted ;  why  the  whole  dispute  appears 
absurd,  and  yet  why  men  cannot  disentangle  themselves 
from  it,  or  can  only  avoid  it  by  refusing  to  think  at  all  on 
some  questions  of  the  greatest  natural  interest  and  attrac- 
tiveness. Nothing,  indeed,  can  better  illustrate  the  position 
of  man  in  respect  to  the  world  in  which  he  is  than  this 
very  controversy.  For  the  point  on  which  it  truly  turns 
is,  whether  the  appearance  of  the  universe  corresponds  to 
the  fact ;  whether  our  natural  impressions  respecting  ex- 
istence do,  or  do  not,  require  to  be  rectified. 

If  the  fact  be  such  as  the  appearance  is,  then  there 
must  be  matter.    Matter,  therefore,  is  necessarily  asserted, 
because  the  correspondence  of  the  appearance  and  the  fact 
is  necessarily  assumed,  until  by  larger  knowledge  we  are 
able  to  distinguish  between  them.     It  is  a  hypothesis  to 
which  we  are  compelled  to  have  recourse,  while  we  con- 
sider that  which  appears  to  be  that  which  is.    But,  on  the 
other  hand,  matter  must  be  denied.     It  is  in  this  way  that 
the  human  intellect  expresses  its  feeling  that  the  appear- 
ance and  the  fact  are  not  the  same,  that  the  universe  is  not 
truly  such  as  it  is  felt  by  us.     An  expression  imperfectly, 
and  even  inconsistently  made,  because  of  defective  knowl- 
edge, but  not,  therefore,  without  its  value.    The  material- 
ness  of  the  world  is  asserted  on  the  one  hand,  and  denied 
upon  the  other  j  asserted,  because  the  existence  of  a  world 
such  as  we  perceive  it,  involves  the  existence  of  matter  ; 
denied,  because  the  existence  of  matter  involves  contradic' 
tions  and  untenable  conceptions.    The  question  at  issue  is 
not   one  of  existence,  but  of  mode  of  existence;   not 
whether  the  universe  is,  but  whether  it  is  such  as  it  is  fell 
by  man. 


c.  III.] 


OF  IDEALISM. 


Ill 


I 

I 


A  simple  illustration  will  make  clear  the  nature  of  the 
disputed  point.  When  we  look  at  a  straight  chimney 
through  defective  glass,  the  chimney  appears  crooked. 
And  if  we  had  no  experience  by  which  to  correct  our  im- 
pressions, we  should  necessarily  suppose  it  to  be  crooked  ; 
we  should  necessarily  infer  a  crookedness.  But  in  this 
condition  of  our  knowledge,  it  might  be  argued  on  indis- 
putable grounds  that  there  could  not  be  such  crookedness ; 
its  possibility  might  be  disproved.  How,  then,  should  we 
be  situated, — on  the  one  hand,  the  evidence  of  sense  affirm- 
ing the  existence  of  a  crooked  chimney  ;  on  the  other 
hand,  argument  proving  the  impossibility  of  it  ?  Just  as 
the  metaphysicians  have  been  situated  :  sense,  on  the  one 
hand,  affirming  the  existence  of  a  material  world,  argument 
proving  that  it  cannot  be.  We  should  have  found  it  as 
hard  to  understand  that  the  dispute  about  the  chimney 
affected,  not  its  existence,  but  its  crookedness,  as  we  have 
found  it  hard  to  understand  that  the  dispute  about  the 
world  affects,  not  its  existence,  but  its  materialness.  Nor 
could  anything  have  solved  the  problem,  but  the  discovery 
of  what  it  was  that  caused  us  to  perceive  the  chimney 
crooked  when  it  was  not.  So  can  the  dispute  respecting 
matter  end  only  with  the  recognition  of  the  cause  that 
makes  us  feel  the  world  material  when  it  is  not.  Mean- 
while, it  is  interesting  to  observe  that  our  mode  of  percept 
tion  of  the  chimney  would  necessitate  our  inferring  a  prop- 
erty, or  abstraction,  of  '  crookedness,'  which  had  no  exist- 
ence, nor  anything  corresponding  to  it ;  for  so  w  e  may 
more  easily  understand  that  conditions  affecting  our  per- 
ception of  the  universe  may  necessitate  our  inferring  a 
quality  of  *  materialness,'  or  abstraction  of  *  matter,'  that 
has  no  existence,  nor  anything  corresponding  to  it.  Mat- 
ter, therefore,  is  a  hypothesis,  necessary  to  be  believed  in 
80  long  as  we  think  the  phenomenon  is  the  fact.    It  has 


112 


OF   IDEALISM. 


[B.  II. 


been  believed  in,  because  the  phenomenon  is  the  fact  to  us ; 
it  ceases  to  be  necessary  when  we  understand  why  it  is 
that  our  impression  is  not  true. 

Another  illustration,  perhaps  more  worthy  of  the  dignity 
of  the  subject,  may  be  found  in  the  history  of  astronomy. 
So  long  as,  through  ignorance,  that  which  is  perceived  by 
sense  in  the  heavens  was  necessarily  believed  to  correspond 
with  the  truth,  it  was  also  found  necessary  to  suppose  solid 
revolving  wheels,  by  which  the  various  heavenly  bodies 
were  conceived  to  be  carried  in  their  revolutions.     These 
wheels  were  the  epicycles  ;  they  were  necessarily  believed 
while  the  appearance  was  believed  to  be  the  fact,  and 
ceased  to  be  necessary  when  the  truth  was  recognised,  and 
through  increasing  knowledge  the  appearance  was  under- 
stood to  be  an  appearance  only.    *  Matter  is  like  the  epi- 
cycles in  this,  that  it  must  be  supposed  while  the  appear- 
ance is  believed  to  be  the  fact ;  ceases  to  be  supposed  when, 
through  increasing  knowledge,  it  is  seen  that  the  fact  is 
different  from  the  appearance.     If  the  universe  which  truly 
exists  be  not  inert,  then  the  necessity  for  supposing  matter, 
which  arises  from  our  perception  of  it  as  inert,  is  done 
away.    Men  have  believed  in  matter  because  they  did  not 
know  that  the  apparent  inertness  was  due  to  man's  con- 
dition. 

The  course  of  thought  respecting  it  has  been  this.  Mat- 
ter is  necessarily  to  be  inferred  if  the  world  be  such  as  it 
appears.  But  then  if  matter  be  disproved,  if  that  inference 
be  proved  erroneous,  it  follows  that  the  world  is  not  such 
as  it  appears.  This  would  seem  to  be  an  easy  solution  of 
the  question.  Bnt  here  a  difficulty  interposes,  for  it  is  in 
any  case  hardly  possible  to  give  up  the  existence  of  that 
which  appears,  until  we  know  what  it  is  that  causes  it  to 
appear.  And  to  the  majority  of  men,  in  this  case,  it  is 
quite  impossible.    We  feel  the  world  to  be  such  as  demands 


c.  III.] 


OF  IDEALISM. 


113 


the  supposition  of  matter,  and  until  we  recognise  man's 
want  of  life  we  flo  not  know  why  we  must  feel  it  so  if  it  be 
not  truly  so.  This  is  why  matter  cannot  be  given  up,  why 
the  denial  of  it  appears  like  a  denial  of  the  world  alto- 
gether, a  contradiction  of  common  sense.  For  it  involves 
an  alteration  of  our  conception  of  man  ;  a  recognition  of 
illusion,  and  of  a  cause  for  his  being  under  illusion,  which 
is  contrary  to  our  natural  impressions. 

The  difficulty  may  be  well  understood  by  conceiving  the 
epicycles  denied  without  a  recognition  of  the  motion  of  the 
earth.     It  might  have  been  argued,  truly  enough,  that  the 
epicycles  could  not  exist.     They  are  impossible.     But  the 
denial  of  them  would  have  seemed  to  contradict  percep- 
tion, for  it  would  involve  the  denial  of  the  apparent  motion. 
They  can  be  dispensed  with  only  on  the  recognition  of  that 
other  motion  which,  involving  ourselves,  affects  our  per- 
ception.    In  a  similar  way,  to  deny  matter  involves  the 
denial  of  inertness  in  nature,  for  if  nature  be  inert,  matter 
must  be  inferred.     But  this  seems  to  be  denying  percep- 
tion, for  we  do  certainly  perceive  an  inertness,  nor  can 
matter  be  given  up,  except  by  the  recognition  of  that  in- 
ertness which,  pertaining  to  man,  affects  our  perception. 
Briefly,  the  denial  of  matter  is  the  denial  of  inaction  in 
nature  ;  it  is  necessary,  therefore,  because  there  cannot  be 
an  inaction  in  nature,  matter  is  easily  disproved  ;  it  avails 
not  to  disprove  it,  because  the  inaction  is  perceived.     The 
only  possible  solution  is  to  recognise  the  defect  in  man 
which  makes  him  perceive  it. 

The  parallel  that  has  been  indicated  may  be  carried 
farther ;  for  the  mental  life  of  man  is  emphatically  one. 
As  the  complex  and  cumbrous  hypothesis  of  the  epicycles, 
felt  at  length  to  be  impossible,  was  the  means  by  which 
tlie  earth's  motion  was  made  known  ;  so  are  the  complex 
conceptions,  to  which  the  hypothesis  of  matter  compels  us 


114 


OF  IDEALISM. 


[B.  II. 


C.  III.] 


OP   IDEALISM. 


115 


to  have  recourse,  the  means  by  which  we  are  made  to  know 
the  inertness,  or  deadness  of  man.  Once  recognised,  in- 
deed, these  hard-won  results  (of  astronomy  in  transferring 
the  motion  to  the  earth,  of  science  in  transferring  the  in- 
ertness, or  defect,  to  man)  appear  self-evident  and  impos- 
sible to  be  doubted  ;  they  furnish  so  evidently  the  solution 
which  the  facts  of  man's  experience  demand  ;  but  the  toil 
which  wins  them  is  long,  the  opposite  conviction  deeply 
rooted,  and  at  first  the  difficulty  in  adopting  the  new  con- 
ception almost  insuperable  ;  the  admission  that  men  can 
have  been  so  long  mistaken  hardly  possible. 

The  arguments  against  the  possible  existence  of  matter 
need  not  here  be  recapitulated.     It  is  sufficient  that  they 
are  allowed  by  almost  all  who  have  paid  attention  to  them 
to  be  logically  conclusive ;  so  that  the  ground  which  is 
taken  on  the  other  side  is  a  falling  back  upon  consciousness 
and  common  sense,  the  affirmation  that  reason  cannot  deal 
with  these  questions,  and  that  matter  must  be  believed 
although  it  can  be  disproved.     But  the  grounds  on  which 
the  things  that  we  perceive  have  been  asserted  to  be  ideas, 
are  too  instructive  to  be  passed  over.     When  the  objects 
of  sense  are  attentively  investigated,  it  soon  becomes  ap. 
parent  that  there  are  qualities  conceived  as  belonging  to 
them,  which  are  in  truth  inseparable  from  the  mind  by 
which  they  are  perceived.    Very  obviously  their  color  and 
temperature  are  such  qualities.     Without  a  mind,  there 
can  be  neither  heat,  nor  cold,  nor  color.     These  are  sensa- 
tions, as  much  as  pain  or  pleasure.    The  same  mode  of 
reasoning  proves  all  the  other  perceived  qualities  of  sen- 
sible things  to  involve  a  mental  appreciation.    Hence  the 
inference  :  that  which  is  perceived  by  sense  involves  mental 
elements  ;  it  cannot  exist  except  in  a  mind  ;  but  that  which 
exists  m  a  mind  is  an  idea  ;  therefore  the  objects  of  sense 
are  ideas.    So,  by  a  series  of  deductions  very  hard  to  be 


escaped,  we  find  ourselves  driven  to  a  conclusion  the  most 
incredible.  For  if  one  thing  be  more  certain  than  another, 
it  seems  to  be  that  the  things  which  we  perceive  by  our 
senses  differ  altogether  from  ideas.  There  is  an  exter- 
nality, a  substance,  in  the  one,  which  there  is  not  in  the 
other.  Whence  then  comes  the  difficultv?  On  the  one 
hand,  it  is  unquestionable  that  that  which  I  call  a  thing 
cannot  exist,  as  it  is  perceived,  without  a  mind  ;  yet,  on 
the  other  hand,  I  mean  by  it,  and  feel  that  I  am  right,  a 
thing  that  exists  independently  not  only  of  my  own  mind, 
but  of  all  minds  whatever.  By  the  *  thing'  I  do  not  mean 
a  state  of  mind,  but  that  which  causes  the  state  of  mind. 
There  is  here,  however,  nothing  that  is  not  perfectly  simple. 
The  idealist  has  but  exposed  an  error  on  our  part,  showing 
that  our  premises  lead  to  a  false  conclusion.  He  has  ar- 
gued from  the  natural  assumption  that  the  appearance  cor- 
responds to  the  truth  of  things,  and  by  his  conclusion 
proves  the  assumption  wrong.  By  studying  that  which 
appears,  we  find  that  it  is  not,  as  we  had  supposed,  that 
which  exists  ;  therefore  that  which  exists  is  of  a  different 
kind.  The  basis  of  idealism  is  assuming  the  existence  of 
the  phenomenon,  or  that  the  fact  corresponds  to  the  ap- 
pearance. For  that  which  appears  is  proved  to  have  qual- 
ities which  show  that  it  cannot  exist  independently  of  a 
mind.  But  this  proves  nothing  about  that  which  is.  Just 
in  so  far  as  the  appearance  is  different  from  that  which 
truly  exists,  so  far  must  it  depend  upon  the  mind,  and  can- 
not possibly  exist  without  it.  For  this  is  only  to  say,  in  a 
circuitous  manner,  that  it  is  an  appearance,  and  not  the 
fact.  The  admission  that  the  things  that  are  perceived 
are  ideas,  or  exist  in  a  mind,  can  be  extorted  only  so  long 
as  we  choose  to  grant  that  the  apparent  mode  of  existence 
of  the  world  is  the  true  mode  of  its  existence.  The  ideal- 
ist therefore  proves  that  the  world  is  not  such  as  it  appears. 


116 


OF  IDEALISM. 


[B.  II. 


C.  III.] 


OF  IDEALISM. 


117 


But  in  truth  his  argument  should  not  have  been  needed. 
That  the  appearance  of  the  universe  to  us  must  differ  from 
the  fact  is  evident  in  the  nature  of  things,  and  is  confirmed 
by  the  analogy  of  all  perception  of  individual  things.  The 
idealist,  therefore,  has  proved  to  us  that  which  we  might 
have  known  before.  He  has  reminded  us  how  wrongly  we 
are  thinking. 

It  is  interesting  to  observe  the  practical  issue  of  this 
argument.  Man's  life  is  illustrated  by  it ;  for  the  question 
is  not  one  of  mere  speculation,  our  profoundest  feelings 
and  beliefs  are  implicated  in  it.  The  idealist,  of  course, 
repudiates  matter.  For,  proving  that  the  things  perceived, 
if  having  the  qualities  with  which  they  are  perceived,  are 
states  of  a  mind,  there  remains  neither  necessity  nor  possi- 
bility for  that  hypothesis.  It  is  no  more  required.  The 
substratum  is  mental,  not  material.  It  is  for  this  reason 
that  the  controversy  turns  on  matter.  That  is  not  indeed 
the  true  point  in  question,  but  it  furnishes  a  convenient 
issue  on  which  the  discussion  may  be  raised.  Matter  must 
be  inferred  if  the  idealist  be  wrong,  need  not  be  inferred 
if  he  be  right.  This  form  of  the  argument,  however,  has 
the  disadvantage  of  giving  to  the  question  an  aspect  of 
abstruseness  and  unreasonableness  which  by  no  means 
rightly  belongs  to  it ;  making  it  appear  to  be  a  question 
respecting  existence  instead  of  one  respecting  mode  of  ex- 
istence.*   For  by  matter,  men  in  general  mean  '  things,* 

♦  In  truth  the  question,  instead  of  being  merely  speculative,  is  eminently 
practical.  It  is  remarkable  to  note  how  the  idealist  argument  has  been, 
from  first  to  last,  subordinate  to  ethics.  Tlie  idealist  writers  are  primarily 
moralists,  almost  without  exception,  speculation  being  wholly  secondary 
with  them.  And  this  is  quite  natural.  Necessarily,  the  question  of  what 
the  world  truly  is,  is  of  all  the  most  practical,  and  deeply  touching  the  life 
and  action  of  men.  And  that  view  of  it  which  brings  it  most  into  union  with 
our  mental  and  moral  being  is  especially  adapted  to  a  view  of  man's  life 
from  a  practical  and  moral  standing  point.    By  no  means  is  a  man  who 


1 


hi 

I 


the  world.  They  do  not  recognise  that  which  Bacon 
terms  '  the  phantasmal  matter  of  the  schools'  at  all.  If 
the  question  were  put  before  men  as  it  truly  is,  and  they 
were  asked  :  '  Can  the  universe  truly  be  precisely  such  as 
it  seems  to  us  to  be  ;  must  there  not  be  much  less  in  its 
mode  of  being  to  us,  through  our  want  of  capacity  to 
know,  than  there  truly  is  ?  Ought  we,  or  ought  we  not, 
confidently  to  afl&rm  that  something  which  no  man  knows 
anything  about  must  certainly  be,  because  otherwise  the 
universe  cannot  be  such  as  it  appears  to  us  ;  and  ought  we 
to  make  this  assertion  in  spite  of  an  overwhelming  argu- 
ment against  it  ?  '  there  can  be  little  doubt  what  the  reply 
would  be.  Men  scoff  at  the  denial  of  matter,  only  because 
it  implies  to  them  the  denial  of  any  universe  at  all.  They 
mean,  by  the  word,  something  wholly  different  from  that 
which  is  denied.  Men  in  general  are  far  enough  from 
being  idealists,  but  they  are  at  least  as  far  from  believing 
in  matter.  They  afl&rm  that  there  exists  a  real  world 
which  is  not  an  idea  ;  but  they  do  not  mean  to  aflfirm  that 
it  exists  in  such  a  way  as  to  involve  opinions  which  can 
be  shown  to  be  not  true. 

For  it  cannot  be  too  clearly  understood,  that  by  assert- 
ing matter  we  merely  assert  that  the  universe  is  such  as  it 
appears  to  us  ;  we  assert  that  it  truly  is  inert.  We  will 
not  be  content  to  say,  only,  that  we  perceive  it  so,  which 
alone  we  know.  That  seems  not  modest  enough,  not  suffi- 
ciently distrustful  of  our  own  powers.  For  the  due  exer- 
cise of  humility  we  prefer  to  say  :  The  world  is  certainly 
such  as  it  appears  to  us  ;  but  reason  cannot  solve  the  prob- 
lems which  arise  out  of  our  thinking  so  ;  we  must  believe 
things  which    are  contrary  to    unanswerable  argument. 

says,  '  Tlie  world  can  exist  only  in  a  mind,'  a  mere  speculator.  He  says 
that,  because  he  is  resolved  that  his  mind  shall  subdue  and  mould  the  world, 
and  turn  it  to  noble  uses. 


118 


OF  IDEALISM. 


TB  II. 


But  in  which  of  these  courses  lies  the  true  humbleness,  in 
which  the  wisdom,  in  which  the  safety  ?  Which  is  best 
sanctioned  by  the  course  of  Providence,  which  shows  the 
truest  trust  and  submissiveness  ?  Which  shall  we  think  : 
that  God  suffers  us  to  perceive  the  universe  as  it  is  not, 
and  bids  us  learn  that  we  do  so  by  the  exercise  of  the 
powers  that  He  has  given  us  ;  or,  that  He  suffers  us  to  be 
under  the  necessity  of  reasoning  wrongly,  and  of  contra- 
dicting by  the  best  and  clearest  exercise  of  our  powers 
that  which  is  true  ?  and  this,  with  no  result,  no  escape, 
nothing  but  a  mere  unsatisfied  perplexity,  or  worse,  a  self- 
satisfied  contentment?  Looking  truthfully  into  life,  which 
is  most  like  His  other  dealings  ? 

For  humility  and  genuine  abasement  of  self,  let  any  man 
understand  that  the  universe  is  truly  spiritual,  and  is  inert 
to  man  only  by  his  own  want  of  life ;  there  is  a  source  of 
humbleness  in  that  conviction,  which  need  not  be  rein- 
forced by  any  limitation  of  the  possible  achievements  of 
the  mind.  When  the  intellect  is  in  its  right  place,  it  needs 
no  curbing  for  fear  of  pride  :  it  has  no  longer  any  power 
to  make  proud.  And,  in  truth,  what  men  are  prouder, 
more  self-satisfied,  than  some  of  those  who  most  insist  on 
man's  incapacity  to  know  ?  That  leaves  quite  untouched 
those  relative  superiorities  on  which  pride  is  nourished. 
It  is  a  vain  conceit  that  high  gifts  conduce  to  pride  :  that 
man  may  be  too  much  lifted  up  by  feeling  that  his  Maker 
has  been  too  greatly  bountiful  to  him.* 

Taking  our  impressions  and  necessary  conceptions  as 
the  standard  of  existence,  it  is  clear  there  must  be  matter. 
If  matter  be  not,  man  must  be  under  illusion,  and  that  not 
in  respect  to  his  opinion  or  thinking  merely,  but  in  respect 


•  See  Baoon'8  argmnent  on  this  point  in  the  first  part  of  the  Advancement 
^  Mjtunutiff. 


C.  III.] 


OF  IDEALISM. 


119 


to  his  feeling  and  being.    There  are  therefore  two  alterna- 
tives :    either  there  is  matter,  or  man  is  defective.     Of 
these  alternatives  the  latter  surely  is  the  more  reasonable 
and  the  more  humble.     For  to  adopt  the  former  and  sav' 
there  must  be  matter,  puts  us  at  once  in  the  position  oV 
affirming  a  thing  to  be  true  on  the  sole  ground  that  we 
cannot  possibly  be  feeling  wrongly,  cannot  be  thus  defec- 
tive.     But  this  would  be  to  put  it  entirely  out  of  our 
power  ever  to  discover  whether  we  are  feeling  wrongly  or 
not.    For  if  that  be  our  case  (and  it  is  clearly  possible) 
we  can  be  made  conscious  of  it  only  in  this  very  way,  of 
finding  that  our  natural  conceptions  lead  to  impossible 
results.    If  we  will  not  admit  it  possible  that  we  may  be 
feeling  wrongly,  that  is  simply  to  make  our  opinion  on 
that  subject  of  no  value,  to  repudiate  the  possibility  of 
escape  from  error,  to  throw  aside  God's  great  gift— the 
power  to  grow  wiser. 

The  question  concerning  matter  is  not,  therefore,  as  we 
are  prone  to  think,  a  mere  speculation,  fit  to  exercise  inge- 
nuity, but  having  no  practical  value.     The  necessity  that 
has  tied  men  to  it,  in  spite  of  themselves,  has  a  wonderful 
significance.     It  cannot  be  laid  to  rest,  because  it  insists 
on  a  solution.     We  are  apt  to  say,  there  is  matter ;  it  is 
nonsense  to  deny  it.     Content,  ourselves,  with  words,  we 
would  reduce  all  others  to  the  same  standard  ;  having  no 
sympathy  for  those  who  thirst  for  knowledge.    But  God 
who  guides  man  for  his  purposes,  better  knows  what  it  is 
fit  for  him  to  do.    He  stirs  his  heart  with  an  unquenchable 
resolve  not  to  leave  contradictions  unprobed,  not  to  suc- 
cumb beneath  difficulties,  or  give  up  where  he  cannot  see. 
We  want  more  love,  more  feeling  for  those  who  feel  differ- 
ently from  ourselves,  less  disposition  to  despise  that  for 
which  we  have  no  taste.     It  is  a  poor  and  miserable 
notion,  that  the  opinion  we  are  content  to  regard  as  final 


120 


OF  IDEALISM. 


[B.  II. 


onght  to  content  all  men,  that  the  mysteries  we  accept 
should  be  accepted  by  others  too.  Would  we  check  and 
limit  life,  and  place  a  girdle,  measured  by  our  own  capac- 
ity, around  the  widening  future  of  our  race  ?  To  him 
whom  God  is  training  for  eternity  would  we  say :  think 
for  ever  in  this  way  ;  it  is  the  best  conclusion  I  can  come 
to  ?  Do  we  call  this  being  humble,  and  knowing  the  limit 
of  our  powers  ? 

To  say,  merely,  there  is  and  must  be  matter,  is  not  to 
ignore  the  controversy,  but  only  to  take  one  side  in  it,  and 
that  confessedly  the  weaker,  so  far  as  argument  is  con- 
cerned. To  ignore  it  would  be  to  have  no  opinion  whether 
there  is  matter  or  not.  And,  indeed,  that  would  be  truly 
a  wise  thing  on  the  part  of  those  who  refuse  to  study  the 
question.  What  faculties  have  we  by  which  we  can  so 
certainly  know  that  there  is  matter,  especially  when  the 
more  we  use  our  faculties  the  more  doubtful  it  becomes  ? 
The  question  truly  is,  whether  a  particular  inference,  a 
certain  hypothesis  or  mode  of  accounting  for  our  experience, 
is  necessary.  We,  taking  for  granted  our  natural  impres- 
sion, say  it  is ;  the  idealist,  examining  the  facts  of  the 
case,  says  it  is  not.  Why  should  we  be  so  anxious  to 
maintain  a  hypothesis,  and,  above  all,  a  hypothesis  which 
explains  nothing  ?  For  we  permit  ourselves  to  rest  in  an 
idea  that  the  supposed  existence  of  matter  explains  our 
sensations.  But  if  we  reflect,  in  what  way  could  the  exist- 
ence of  matter  explain  sensation,  into  what  remotest 
shadow  of  connexion  can  the  two  things  be  brought? 
The  chasm  between  matter  and  sensation  is  impassable. 
The  mystery  of  our  consciousness  is  only  made  greater 
by  the  supposition  of  matter.  We  have  asserted  the 
authority  of  an  impression,  a  natural  belief :  so  far,  doubt- 
less, we  have  gratified  a  tendency  of  the  mind,  and  have  a 


c.  III.] 


OP  IDEALISM. 


121 


certain  satisfaction,  but  we  have  explained  nothing.  We 
have  only  fixed  in  irremediable  confusion  and  darkness 
every  question  that  can  arise  respecting  the  nature,  the 
reason,  or  the  mode  of  our  experience  ;*  a  confusion  which 
extends  itself  to  all  other  questions  whatever,  except  those 
which  have  reference  merely  to  the  relations  of  phenomena. 
For  we  have  affirmed  the  existence  of  that  which  appears, 
instead  of  making  use  of  that  which  appears;  to  learn  from 
it  that  which  exists.  Never  can  we  answer  any  question 
respecting  existence,  till  we  have  rectified  that  error. 

Matter  is  affirmed,  simply  because  we  do  not  see  any 
other  way  in  which  our  sensuous  perception,  and  our  men- 
tal feeling,  could  be  such  as  they  are.  But  how  weak  an 
argument  is  this,  even  at  the  best.  Must  a  particular  sup- 
position be  true,  because  we  cannot  otherwise  understand 
how  certain  events  should  be  ?  Must  we  be  able  to  account 
for  all  things  ?  Do  we  ever  reason  so,  except  as  conducting 
to  a  mere  presumption,  diminishing  in  value  precisely  as 
our  knowledge  of  the  whole  circumstances  and  possibilities 
of  the  case  diminishes,  and  never  to  be  maintained  for  a 
moment  against  the  least  sound  argument  to  the  contrary  ? 
Let  it  be  granted  that  there  is  no  other  way  in  which  we 
can  account  for  our  perception  and  consciousness,  must  we, 
therefore,  assert  a  disprovable  proposition?  Should  we 
call  this  common  sense  in  any  other  case  ?  Should  we  not 
say  simply,  and  at  once  :  we  do  not  know  enough  ?  Let 
it  be  granted  that  the  world  is  not  an  idea,  and  that  it  is 
proved  also  that  it  cannot  be  matter ;  is  there  nothing 
else  that  it  can  be?  Do  ideas  and  matter  exhaust  all 
possibilities?  Is  there  no  other  way  in  which  our  ex- 
perience may  be  accounted  for  ? 

*  See  the  many  and  even  extravagant  theories  that  have  been  made  to 
account  for  it  on  the  supposition  of  matter.  The  *  Pro-established  Harmony,' 
especially. 

6 


122 


OF  IDEALISM. 


[B.  II. 


a  III.] 


OF  IDEALISM. 


123 


There  is  another  way.  The  very  difficulty  itself  opens 
another  way  to  us.  There  is  the  belief,  the  proof  of  which 
is  hereby  given  to  us,  that  man  is  defective,  and  that  he 
feels  as  facts,  or  as  having  true  existence,  things  which  are 
merely  appearances,  and  do  not  exist : — that  his  feeling  is 
deceptive.  Not  having  the  life  to  know  that  which  is,  he 
has  felt  and  believed  that  to  be  which  is  not.  Not  know- 
ing his  own  condition,  he  has  assumed  a  defect  in  nature 
instead  of  in  himself.  Thus  it  is  we  are  compelled  to  infer 
matter,  and,  when  we  have  done  so,  find  we  have  done 
wrong.  Arguing  from  the  premiss  that  the  phenomenon 
exists,  we  necessarily  arrive  at  a  false  conclusion.  An 
evident  solution  of  the  mystery  is  here.  There  need  not 
be  matter,  though  we  have  been  obliged  to  infer  it,  if  man 
feel  wrongly  and  have  been  under  illusion ;  and  that  he 
has  been  so,  is  the  key  to  his  whole  life. 

Thus,  understanding  our  condition,  we  perceive  why 
idealism  must  arise,  why  it  must  fail.  It  must  arise,  because, 
through  our  false  feeling,  the  inference  we  draw  must  be 
false,  and  idealism  shows  it  to  be  so  ;  it  must  fail,  because 
idealism  only  proves  the  error,  does  not  remove  it.  Ideal- 
ism also  rests,  like  the  belief  in  matter,  on  the  assumption 
that  the  appearance  is  the  fact.  One  error  vitiates  both 
the  opposing  schemes.  Instead  of  the  true  world,  which 
is  spiritual  and  eternal,  our  natural  impression  gives  us  a 
world  temporal  and  inert,  and  idealism  gives  us  a  world 
which  exists  only  in  thought.  Neither  will  do.  Each 
refutes  the  other ;  strong  to  destroy  its  rival,  impotent  to 
maintain  itself.  The  conflict  was  indispensable  for  our 
deliverance ;  invaluable  good  has  arisen  from  it,  but  also 
this  small  evil,  that  men  think  because  idealism  fails,  there- 
fore the  opposite  opinion  must  be  true  ;  that  if  the  world 
be  not  an  idea,  then  it  must  be  matter.  Not  perceiving 
that  it  is  precisely  on  the  materialness  that  the  idealist 


bases  his  argument,  and  that  to  assert  it  is  to  concede  to 
him  his  own  ground.  Matter  is  the  phenomenon,  it  is 
that  which  we  conceive ;  if  that  which  truly  exists  have 
the  qualities  called  material,  then  is  the  world  an  idea. 
The  world  is  not  material  apart  from  perception.* 

If  it  be  granted  to  the  idealist  that  that  which  we  con- 
ceive is  that  which  exists,  he  is  at  once  victorious,  for  that 
can  only  be  in  a  mind.     This,  indeed,  is  evident ;  that 
which  is  thus  conceived  is  the  phenomenon  ;  we  want  to 
know  what  that  is  which  causes  the  phenomenon  to  be  per- 
ceived by  us.    The  idealist  asserts  that  it  must  be  the  very 
thing  that  is  conceived,  or  something  exactly  correspond- 
ing to  it,  therefore  also  something  that  exists  in  a  mind, 
therefore  an  idea.    The  true  answer  to  the  idealist  is,  that 
the  fact  which  exists  has  not  those  properties  which  he 
points  out  in  the  phenomenon,  as  pertaining  to  the  per- 
ceiving mind.    The  fact  is  different  from  the  phenomenon, 
and  must  be,  because  in  the  latter  are  included  negative 
qualities,  which  preclude  existence.    In  a  word,  the  fact  is 
spiritual,  is  eternal,  not  to  be  known  either  by  sense  or 
intellect,  which  are  in  relation  with  phenomena  alone. 
But  for  this  answer  the  way  was  not  prepared  ;  it  involves 
a  recognition  of  man's  want  of  life.    Therefore  it  was 
argued  that  the  fact  did,  indeed,  differ  from  the  phenome- 
non, but  in  some  unknown,  undefinable  way ;  that  the 
matter,  which  is  asserted  to  exist,  had  not  any  of  the  prop- 


o  There  is  no  mystery  in  this:  it  is  only  a  peculiar  and  indirect  mode  of 
expression  arising  from  the  particular  nature  of  the  argument.  From  another 
point  of  view,  we  might  speak  quite  intelligibly  of  ordinary  tilings  in  the 
same  language:  t.g.  apart  from  perception  the  moon  is  not  bright,  nor  the 
sun  revolving,  nor  even  are  leaves  green.  Color  as  being  a  sensation,  of 
course  is  only  in  being  perceived.  It  is  a  power  of  causing  that  sensation 
that  we  mean  to  aflfirm  of  the  leaf  Of  course  it  is  only  another  form  of  the 
same  proposition  to  say:  apart  from  perception  there  is  not  a  material 
world ;  apart  from  perception  there  is  not  a  revolving  sun. 


* 


121 


OF  IDEALISM. 


[B.  II. 


erties  which  are  perceived,  but  is  a  substratum  wholly 
unknown.  This  would  be  good,  so  far,  if  it  were  genuine. 
That  the  fact  is  unknown  is  the  best  thing  that  can  be 
said,  until  something  be  known  about  it ;  but  the  way  in 
which  this  unknown  substratum,  still  called  matter,  is 
maintained,  is  in  effect  a  subterfuge.  By  being  aflBrmed 
unknown,  it  is  withdrawn  from  discussion  ;  while  by  its 
being  called  matter,  the  concession  is  virtually  done  away, 
and  it  is  practically  endowed  with  the  properties  of  that 
which  is  perceived.  The  maintainers  of  matter  yield  to 
the  idealist  reasoning  in  words,  but  not  in  thought ;  they 
adapt  their  words  to  resist  the  demands  of  argument,  but 
leave  the  false  conception  unrectified.  This  also,  however, 
could  not  have  been  otherwise.  In  truth,  the  doctrine  of 
an  unknown  substratum  denies  the  existence  of  that  which 
is  perceived,  and  asserts  a  mere  unknown  existence  in  its 
place.  On  this  ground  the  idealist  attacks  it.  He  says  : 
that  which  exists  is  this  known,  felt  world,  with  these 
qualities  which  it  appears  to  have,  and  by  virtue  of  which 
it  can  exist  only  in  a  mind ;  by  asserting  an  unknown 
matter,  you  deny  the  world  in  which  common  sense  makes 
us  believe,  which  is  the  world  that  we  perceive  and  know. 
Here  is  the  exact  difficulty  of  the  question.  We  wish  to 
maintain  the  true  existence  of  the  phenomenon,  but  find  we 
cannot  do  so.  In  one  of  two  ways  we  must  deny  it,  either 
by  allowing  that  it  can  exist  only  in  a  mind,  which  is  to 
be  a  phenomenon,  and  not  a  true  existence  ;  or  by  assert- 
ing that  that  which  exists  is  absolutely  unknown,  which 
involves  that  that  which  is  perceived,  and  therefore  known, 
does  not  exist ;  again  meaning  that  it  is  a  phenomenon, 
and  not  a  fact.  There  is  truly  here  no  difficulty  or  paradox 
whatever.  All  the  appearance  of  it  arises  from  our  neces- 
sity of  maintaining  that  to  be  truly  real  which  is  real  to 
us.    When  once  we  recognise  that  that  which  is  real  to  us 


0.  III.] 


OF  IDEALISM. 


125 


is  not  truly  real,  and  therein  become  aware  of  our  own 
state,  there  is  no  more  any  difficulty.  The  existence  of  the 
phenomenon  ought  to  be  disproved  ;  the  endeavor  to 
maintain  it  ought  to  make  manifest  that  it  cannot  be. 
Our  reason  does  not  fail  in  dealing  with  the  question, 
does  not  land  us  in  paradoxes  ;  rather  it  proves  itself  pre- 
cisely suited  to  the  inquiry  ;  it  elicits  the  very  results  that 
ought  to  be  elicited,  proving  by  the  untenable  character 
of  the  conclusions  the  falseness  of  the  premiss.  If  inquiry 
failed  to  prove  that  the  material  things  we  naturally  sup- 
posed to  exi^t  cannot  exist,  then  our  faculties  would  be 
deceptive  and  inadequate ;  they  would  be  unable  to  expose 
our  error.  It  is  remarkable  that  the  very  truthfulness  of 
our  faculties,  and  their  power  to  grapple  with  the  problem 
of  the  world,  has  been  the  basis  of  the  opinion  we  have 
formed  of  their  inability  :  because  they  led  us  to  a  result 
we  were  unwilling  to  accept,  we  said  that  they  deceived 
us.  We  would  not  be  guided  by  reason,  and  give  up  the 
reality  of  that  which  we  feel  as  real ;  we  would  not  believe 
what  it  implied  respecting  man,  therefore  we  said,  reason 
cannot  guide  us.  Not  that  men  should  or  could  have  done 
otherwise.  The  world  goes  the  course  which  God  has  ap- 
pointed ;  the  process  of  thought  cannot  be  cut  short.  But 
we  can  do  otherwise  now.  We  can  understand  why  all 
these  various  opinions  and  disputes  have  been  necessary. 
We  can  trace  them  all  from  that  defect  on  man's  part, 
whereby  he  feels  the  phenomenon  to  be  the  fact. 

And  especially  to  be  admired  is  the  assertion,  against 
the  idealist,  of  an  unknown  substratum.  That  is,  above 
all  things,  necessary.  It  is  the  assertion  that  there  is  a 
fact,  a  real  world,  though  we  may  not  know  it,  against  the 
assertion  that  there  is  nothing  but  the  phenomenon. 
Rightly,  in  one  sense,  has  this  argument  assumed  the 
name  of  common  sense.    It  is  the  unquenchable  feeling  in 


126 


OF  IDEALISM. 


[B.  II. 


man  that  the  world,  in  which  he  is,  is  a  real,  actually  ex- 
isting world.  *  If  these  things  that  I  perceive,  be  not  ex- 
isting, save  by  perception,  the  world  exists  notwithstand- 
ing, though  I  may  not  be  able  to  know  it.  That  which 
only  exists  in  being  perceived  is  not  that  which  I  mean 
when  I  speak  of  the  world,  and  which  I  am  sure  exists, 
without  which,  indeed,  nothing  could  be  perceived  at  all.' 
It  is  the  actual,  eternal,  not-inert  world  of  which  this  is 
spoken.  This  is  the  world  which  must,  and  does  exist ;  is 
the  cause  of  all  perception,  of  all  experience,  yet  which 
cannot  be  known  (not  known,  that  is,  by  sense  or  intellect) ; 
with  which  all  our  experience  brings  us  into  continual 
relation,  with  which  alone  we  truly  have  to  do,  but  which 
is  not  the  things  which  change  and  pass,  is  not  such  as 
that  which  we  perceive  by  sense,  or  conceive  in  thought. 
This  is  truly  the  doctrine  of  common  sense.  *  This  is  an 
unknown  existence,  which  I  can  neither  see  nor  think, 
which  constitutes  the  true  being  of  the  world,  and  is  the 
cause  of  all  my  consciousness,  of  all  my  perception.  How 
different  soever  that  which  appears  to  me  may  be  from 
this  which  is,  whatever  may  be  proved  about  the  former, 
however  impossible  it  may  be  shown  that  it  should  exist  as 
I  think  ;  all  this  cannot  affect  the  being  of  the  latter. 
Necessarily  that  which  appears  and  that  which  is  must 
differ  ;  if  I  have  thought  otherwise,  it  could  only  be  from 
want  of  reflection.  In  this  respect,  at  least,  I  know  they 
must  differ  ;  that  which  appears  to  me  is  inert  and  tran- 
sient, that  which  exists  cannot  be  so.' 

But  it  has  been  a  great  error  to  give  to  this  unknown 
existence  the  name  of  matter ;  alike  a  great  abuse  of 
words  and  a  palpable  confusion  of  thought.  In  one  sense, 
it  has  the  effect  of  rendering  argument  about  matter  im- 
possible. As  an  absolutely  unknown  substratum,  it  is,  of 
course,  absurd  to  deny  matter.    The  word  stands  merely 


c.  III.] 


OF  IDEALISM. 


127 


as  a  symbol  for  that  which  exists,  be  it  what  it  may.  But 
for  that  purpose  the  word  matter  is  not  suitable,  for  it  has 
a  previous  meaning,  from  which  it  is  almost  impossible  to 
detach  it.  And  that  there  is  a  delusion  in  this  use  of  it  is 
evident.  By  matter,  the  very  men  who  call  it  absolutely 
unknown  mean  a  thing  with  certain  properties.  Other- 
wise to  call  the  world  material  were  unmeaning.  By  this 
use  of  the  word  it  is  sought,  at  once,  to  maintain  the  ex- 
istence of  that  which  appears,  and  to  escape  from  the  con- 
sequences of  that  position ;  an  attempt  to  ward  off  the 
force  of  an  argument,  as  if  it  could  be  a  loss  to  us  to  have 
our  errors  made  manifest,  a  gain  to  hide  from  ourselves  the 
falsity  of  our  conceptions.  Meanwhile,  two  results  ensue. 
First,  that  the  word  matter  is  not  available  for  us.  It  has 
no  fixed  meaning.  If  it  be  merely  that  which  is,  and  be 
entirely  unknown,  then  it  may  be  synonymous  with  spirit 
on  the  one  hand,  or  with  idea  on  the  other,  and  there  need 
be  no  question  whether  the  world  is  material.  To  say 
that  it  is  material  is  merely  to  say  that  it  is  unknowable, 
which  had  better  be  said  straightforwardly,  and  in  a  man- 
ner less  liable  to  be  misunderstood.  For  it  is,  in  fact,  a 
great  and  invaluable  truth  that  the  true  being  of  the  world 
is  in  one  sense  unknowable  :  it  is  not  such  as  can  be 
thought,  for  that  which  is  thought  is  inert.  The  spiritual 
is  in  this  sense  unknowable  ;  that  which  can  be  thought 
cannot  be.*  If,  on  the  other  hand,  as  is  evidently  the 
case,  by  terming  the  world  material,  it  be  meant  that  it 
has  certain  qualities,  if  by  matter  be  meant  that  that  which 
occupies  space,  is  hard  and  heavy,  then  the  force  of  the 
idealist  argument  is  not  evaded,  and  all  that  has  been  said 
about  the  substratum  being  unknown  is  labor  lost. 

*  It  can  only  be  to  ua,  or  relatively.  It  is  phenomenal.  This  is  involved 
in  the  admission  that  our  conception  of  the  universe  is  inadequate ;  different 
therefore  from  that  which  is. 


128 


OP  IDEALISM. 


[B.  II. 


And  secondly,  this  abuse  of  thought  is  severely  avenged. 
For  from  this  contrivance  of  calling  matter  unknowalble, 
arises  in  great  part  the  idea  of  the  limitation  of  our  facul- 
ties and  inability  of  our  thoughts  to  grapple  with  the 
problem  of  the  world.    Because  we  have  chosen  to  assert 
the  existence  of  the  phenomenon,  and  are  therefore  driven 
into  contradictions  when  we  attempt  to  reason  (as  we 
ought  to  be  in  order  to  deliver  us  from  that  false  assump- 
tion), we  seek  to  shut  up  the  universe  from  human  thought, 
neither  entering  in  ourselves,  nor  suffering  those  who  seek 
to  enter  in.    That  is  our  remedy  for  the  results  of  our  own 
errors  :~not  to  think  I     We  say,  nature  is  essentially 
mysterious ;  as  if  God  had  mocked  us  with  a  world  the 
reality  of  which  we  could  not  reach,  and,  gratifying  all 
other  desires,  refused  to  gratify  the  desire  to  know.    The 
intellect  need  take  no  pains  to  limit  itself ;  it  meets  no 
insoluble  problems  for  it  can  know  phenomena,  and  phenom- 
ena  alone  are  presented  to  it.    Existence  does  not  come 
within  its  sphere :  Being  is  known  in  another  way.    To 
know  that  which  is,  is  to  know  God.* 


^     Yet  18  It  not  a  truer  humility,  a  more  genuine  affirmation  of  the  limita- 
tion and  weakness  of  our  faculties,  to  say  that  man  must  not  assume  the 
authority  of  his  own  impressions ;  but  must  inquire  and  learn,  and  remember 
his  own  defectiveness  ?    The  '  voluntary  humility,'  which  imposes  limits  on 
our  mquinea.  vainly  endeavors  to  compensate  for  the  pride  that  lies  at  its 
wot    Bold  and  aspiring  in  its  commencement,  lame  and  impotent  in  ito 
conclusion,  is  the  scheme  which  asserts  the  existence  of  that  which  man 
feels  to  l^     It  overleaps  itself  and  falls  on  the  other  side.     Tlie  assumption 
that  we  do  know  bring  its  own  punishment  in  the  necessary  consequence 
tiiat  we  cannot  know.     Suppose  we  invert  the  order;    put  the  humility 
first     Is  not  that  nature's  order  ?    Let  us  say  rather,  We  do  not  so  author- 
itatively  know  what  is;  we  have  not  faculties  to  know  in  this  intuitive 
manner;  we  must  examine  and  use  mean.s,  be  willing  to  give  up  and  learn 
Then  we  find  no  limits ;  need  never  despair,  never  waste  our  ingenuity  on 
that  vainest  of  aU  •  anticipations, »  of  how  much  man  can  know. 


c.  m.] 


OF  IDEALISM. 


129 


But  the  word  matter,  in  the  abstract  sense,  seems  capa- 
ble of  receiving  a  distinct  and  suitable  meaning ;  matter 
might  be  defined  to  be  '  a  substratum  necessarily  inferred 
on  the  supposition  of  the  absolute  existence  of  the  phenom- 
enon, independent  of  a  mind.'  That  is,  if  that  which  ap- 
pears to  us  is  held  to  be  that  which  exists,  and  that  man's 
perception  is  not  modified  by  his  own  condition,  then  *  mat- 
ter' must  be  supposed.  If  in  this  meaning  it  be  asked 
whether  matter  exists,  evidently  it  does  not ;  for  that 
which  exists  is  not  such  as  appears,  but  diflferent ;  and 
that  which  appears  is  modified  by  man's  mode  of  perception. 
The  hypothesis  of  matter  is  inapplicable.  We  have  been 
compelled  to  believe  in  it,  and  to  maintain  it  against  all 
the  arguments  by  which  it  has  been  assailed,  because,  by 
our  own  state  of  being,  a  false  conception  respecting  the 
being  of  the  world  has  been  made  necessary  to  us,  and  the 
arguments  against  matter  did  not  point  out  what  that 
state  of  our  own  was,  by  virtue  of  which  we  were  com- 
pelled to  infer  it. 

We  do,  and  must,  however,  use  the  word  matter  famil- 
iarly in  a  different  sense,  applying  it,  not  to  the  unknown 
existence,  but  to  the  phenomenon  ;  to  that  which  appears, 
or  is  to  sense  and  to  thought.  This  probably  is  the  best 
application  of  the  term  ;  for  if  it  be  used  otherwise,  there 
unavoidably  arises  a  most  embarrassing  discordance  be- 
tween its  common  and  its  philosophical  meaning,  and  an 
appearance  of  mystery  in  the  question  which  does  not 
rightly  belong  to  it.  Men  in  general  always  mean  by  mat- 
ter, not  an  unknown  substratum,  but  that  which  appears, 
the  things  they  know.  If  by  the  assertion  of  matter 
different  persons  mean  opposite  things,  it  is  no  wonder 
the  question  seems  insoluble  and  absurd.  The  entire  con- 
fusion comes  out  of  retaining  the  name  of  matter  for  the 
unknown  existence,  a  sudden  and  violent  alteration  in  the 
6* 


130 


OF  IDEALISM. 


[B.  II. 


meaning  of  words.  Matter  should  rather  mean  always  the 
phenomenon,  which  is  perceived  by  sense  and  conceived  in 
thought,  not  that  which  is. 

The  true  difficulty  in  dealing  with  the  question  of  mat- 
ter is  rather  moral  than  intellectual.  Idealism  seems  to 
check  the  sympathies,  to  cut  off  the  basis  of  the  affections, 
and  leave  no  real  men  and  women  in  the  world  but  each 
man's  self.  This  feeling  has  in  fact  a  true  foundation. 
The  work  of  idealism  is  to  show  the  unreality  of  that  which 
we  feel  to  be,  not  to  reveal  that  which  is.  We  feel  rightly 
that  it  leaves  a  blank,  an  emptiness.  But  this  is  not  by 
virtue  of  what  it  denies,  but  of  what  it  asserts.  To  deny 
the  materialness  of  the  wx)rld  is  tolerable  enough  ;  it  is 
the  assertion  of  the  idealness  of  it  that  cannot  be  allowed. 
To  deny  materialness  is  not  to  make  less,  but  to  make 
more.  Idealism  fails,  not  through  giving  up  matter,  but 
truly  through  keeping  hold  of  it.  The  idealist  asserts  that 
the  things  to  which  we  give  the  name  of  matter,  the  passing 
things  we  see,  and  touch,  and  use,  are  the  true  facts  of  the 
universe ;  that  there  is  no  fact  in  it  but  these  things. 
Denying  matter  in  words,  idealism  asserts  it  in  fact ; 
while  the  opposing  doctrine,  which  asserts  under  the  name 
of  matter  an  unknown  existence,  in  truth  denies  it.  Ideal- 
ism affirms  of  the  universe  that  it  is  such  as  the  appear- 
ance is  ;  the  assertion  of  an  unknown  substratum  affirms  it 
different. 

We  deny  that  God  is  material,  and  feel  that  He  is  there- 
by not  less  to  us,  but  more.  His  existence  is  intensified, 
rendered  more  absolute,  more  real  by  that  denial.  How 
should  that  be  if  to  be  material  were  not  a  derogation 
from  Being  ?  It  is  even  so  :  to  be  material  is  to  be  want- 
ing in  Being  ;*  therefore  we  are  obliged  to  deny  material- 


*  It  is  in  fact  to  be  phenomenal,  or  apparent ;  to  have  no  existence  ox* 


C.  III.] 


OF   IDEALISM. 


lai 


ness  of  God.  By  doing  so,  we  affirm  of  him  a  truer  exist- 
ence. How,  then,  should  it  seem  to  have  a  contrary  effect 
to  deny  materialness  of  the  universe?  There  is  here  a 
manifest  inconsistency  in  our  thoughts.  In  truth  we 
thereby  deny  that  the  universe  is  wanting  in  being,  we 
raise  it  to  a  truer  existence.  God  does  not  sink  into  an 
idea  by  being  proved  not  material,  nor  does  the  world  that 
he  has  made.  We  should  bethink  ourselves  here  ;  it  is 
not  hard  to  understand  how,  by  affirming  nature  to  be 
material,  we  degrade  it,  and  make  its  existence  less  than 
it  really  is.  The  present  difficulty  about  matter  does  not 
stand  alone.  Man  had  the  same  embarrassment  respecting 
the  materialness  of  God,  as  he  has  now  respecting  the 
materialness  of  the  world.  And  it  was  removed  also  in 
the  same  way  ;  namely,  by  his'  recognition  of  his  own 
defectiveness,  and  the  necessary  inadequacy  of  his  ap- 
preciation. 

As  to  the  forms  which  idealism  has  taken,  a  few  words 
will  suffice.  Berkeley,  who  for  clearness  and  profoundness 
of  thought  lias  perhaps  never  been  surpassed,  argued  that 
since  the  things  that  are  perceived  can  exist  only  in  a 
mind,  and  yet  are  evidently  independent  of  our  own  minds, 
therefore  they  exist  in  the  mind  of  God  ;  are,  so  to  speak, 
ideas  in  the  Divine  Mind,  which  He  causes  us  to  perceive 
according  to  certain  laws  dependent  on  His  will.  Evi- 
dently this  is  not  to  deny  the  existence  of  the  world.  It 
merely  gives  it  a  mental  *  substratum,'  instead  of  a  material 
one,  which  should  be  held  rather  to  make  it  more  than 
less,  to  elevate  rather  than  to  degrade. 

This  conception  has  been  variously  modified,  especially 
by  the  Germans,  who  have  to  a  great  extent  represented 


cept  in  a  mind,  or  in  being  perceived,  to  adopt  the  circuitous  language  of 
idealism;   materialness  involves  inertness,  defect. 


132 


OF  IDEALISM. 


[B.n. 


the  world  as  dependent  upon  human  thought.    The  most 
remarkable  form  of  this  subjective  idealism  is  perhaps  that 
of  Fichte,  who  asserts  of  nature  that  it  is  but  the  limit  of 
the  personality  of  man.     But  however  extravagant  any 
idealistic  schemes  may  appear,  it  should  not  be  forgotten 
that  the  root  and  foundation  of  them  all,  a  root  from  which 
they  must  inevitably  grow,  is  the  affirmation  of  the  exist- 
ence of  the  phenomenon,  or  that  the  universe  truly  is  such 
as  it  appears.     This  assumption  contains  and  is  responsible 
for  them  all ;  they  must  spring  out  of  it,  because,  from  that 
premiss,  sound  reasoning  and  argument  inevitably  conduct 
to  them.    And  by  rigorous  logic  and  reasoning  a  certain 
number  of  men  will  always  be  guided,  be  the  conclusions 
what  they  may.    The  idealist  systems  are  necessary  to  de- 
liver us  from  our  false  conception  by  showing  what  it  leads 
to,  and  they  can  only  be  terminated  by  the  fulfilment  of 
their  task.     They  may  yield  to  an  actual,  spiritual  uni- 
verse, as  ghosts  disappear  before  the  light  of  day  ;  but  they 
will  never  succunfb  to  the  assertion  of  a  real  'matter.' 
When  the  true  fact  is  recognised,  and  the  reason  why  it 
appears  to  us  as  it  does,  then  idealism  may  be  heard  of 
no  more,  but  it  must  last  till  then  ;  for  repulsive  as  it  is  to 
some,  it  is  not  devoid  of  charms.    It  has  its  beautiful  and 
admirable  side. 

There  is  again  what  may  be  called  a  scientific  idealism, 
by  which  matter  is  rejected,  and  nature  is  considered  as 
force  alone.  Under  this  view,  particular  objects  are  re- 
garded as  forces  in  space,  variously  modified  and  mingled, 
and  no  other  substratum  than  the  space  is  recognised. 
Unquestionably  this  is,  for  scientific  purposes,  an  admi- 
rable view.  Forces  in  space  are  the  things  with  which 
science  has  to  do.  It  knows  nothing  of  that  supposed 
matter  of  which  the  properties  alone  are  to  be  perceived. 
But  it  is  evident  that  force  and  matter  are  inseparable. 


\ 


!      f 


c.  in.] 


OF  IDEALISM. 


138 


The  separation  is  excellent  as  an  expedient,  and  adopted 
as  it  is  by  so  many  of  the  leading  minds  engaged  in  physi- 
cal research,  it  exhibits  strikingly  the  tendency  of  science 
towards  non-materialism ;  but  it  cannot  be  a  final  solution 
of  the  question.* 

The  sum  of  the  entire  idealist  controversy  may  be  thus 
expressed  :  There  is  not  a  material  world,  such  as  we  are 
conscious  of  perceiving,  but  there  is  a  truly  existing  and 
real  world,  different  from  that  which  we  are  conscious  of ; 
and  the  reason  we  perceive  it  as  we  do  is  man's  defective- 
ness, through  which  he  is  conscious  of  defect  as  if  around 
him.  The  problem  has  taken  long  to  solve,  but  it  is  not 
peculiar.  Many  men  have  cooperated  to  do  that  in  respect 
to  the  world,  which  each  man  does  for  himself^  many  times 
in  the  course  of  every  day,  in  respect  to  individual  things ; 
correcting  his  natural  impressions  by  discovering  that 
things  cannot  truly  be  as  they  appear  to  him. 


*  The  ordinary  idea  of  matter  is  that  which  occupies  space.  Substance  is 
solidity.  Yet  there  does  not  seem  to  be  any  essential  connexion  between 
the  idea  of  material  existence  and  space.  The  Divine  Omnipresence  is  not 
felt  to  involve  materiality.  Still  there  is  an  obscurity  in  this  subject,  for  the 
further  discussion  of  which  see  Book  Y.,  Dial.  L 


V 


C.  IV.] 


OF  SCEPTICISM. 


135 


i 


CHAPTER   IV. 

OP  scepticism:  and  the  grounds  op  knowledge. 

Our  errors  oft  do  aid  us. 

The  evident  failure  of  the  idealist  theory  to  satisfy  the 
demands  of  consciousness  seemed  to  throw  men  back  upon 
a  belief  in  matter  ;  but  with  this  difference,  that  whereas, 
before,  that  belief  had  been  supposed  to  be  warranted  by 
the  reasoning  powers,  then  it  was  recognised  to  be,  at  least 
to  a  certain  extent,  in  opposition  to  them.  The  true  exist- 
ence of  material  things  was  to  be  believed  on  the  basis  of 
consciousness,  and  in  spite  of  certain  logical  deductions 
from  premisses  that  were  still  to  be  maintained.  From 
this  position,  two  things  necessarily  follow  :  first,  that  con. 
sciousness  must  be  affirmed  to  give  certain  knowledge ;  and 
secondly,  that  our  faculties  must  be  held  incompetent  to 
discuss  the  true  nature  of  the  world.  For,  it  is  argued,  if 
consciousness  do  not  give  us  certainty,  how  can  we  attain 
certainty  at  all  ?  and  if  our  faculties  be  not  incompetent, 
how  is  it  that  they  contradict  that  which  nevertheless  we 
must  believe  ? 

This  is  the  present  position  of  philosophy.  It  is  engaged 
in  a  struggle  to  maintain  the  authority  of  consciousness. 
But  can  this  task  be  achieved  ?  To  assert  the  authority 
of  consciousness  is  one  thing ;  truly  to  maintain  it,  another. 

(134) 


I 


H  ) 


It  is  difficult  to  see  what  argument  can  be  had  recourse  to, 
at  last,  but  this,  that  God  would  not  let  us  be  under  illu- 
sion. Against  which  it  is  replied,  that  our  conviction  on 
that  point  is  no  proof ;  and  the  weakness  of  the  philosophi- 
cal position  is  rendered  manifest  by  the  fact,  that  men  do 
continually  deny  the  authority  of  consciousness  in  the  very 
respects  in  which  it  is  asserted  to  be  undeniable. 

We  need  to  be  on  our  guard  here  against  the  tendency, 
that  is  in  us  all,  to  rest  satisfied  in  an  opinion  that  sufl&ces 
for  ourselves,  without  considering  whether  it  suffices  for 
others  also.  When  we  are  willing  to  admit  a  certain  con- 
clusion as  necessary,  and  as  the  end  of  a  strife  to  which 
we  can  see  no  other  termination,  we  are  apt  to  conclude 
that  others  ought  to  do  the  same,  and  to  hold  it  a  small 
matter  that  all  are  not  convinced.  But  opinions  satis- 
factory to  certain  inviduals,  or  to  certain  classes  only, 
ought  not  to  content  us.  We  require  opinions  that  shall 
be  evidently  true,  not  to  some,  but  to  all ;  reconciliations 
that  shall  command  all  suffrages.  If  philosophy  cannot 
attain  to  these,  she  fails  as  yet  of  her  mission.  She  has  to 
enlarge  her  grasp  of  things.  A  true  philosophy  shall  do 
no  violence  to  any  instinct  or  aspiration  of  our  nature  ; 
shall  not  leave  men  divided  into  hostile  classes,  adherents 
of  opposing  faculties. 

Beautiful  it  is  to  see  how  nature  provides  for  the  ad- 
vance of  knowledge,  by  the  different  mental  characters 
of  men.  Some  attribute  the  chief  value  and  authority  to 
one  portion  of  their  intellectual  being,  others  to  another 
portion ;  and  so  it  is  achieved  that  no  portion  shall  be 
finally  disregarded,  or  defrauded  of  its  share  in  the  deter- 
mination of  human  thought.  For  every  system  which,  as 
all  imperfect  systems  must  do,  asserts  a  scheme  of  things 
at  variance  with  the  full  exercise  of  any  of  the  mental 
instincts  or  capacities,  is  sure  to  be  balanced  and  held  in 


i 


1S6 


OF  SCEPTICISM. 


[B.  n. 


C.  IV.] 


OF  SCEPTICISM. 


137 


check  by  an  opposing  system.     Uniformity  of  thought  can 
be  the  fruit  of  truth  alone. 

Philosophy  must  reconcile  the  conflict  between  the  con- 
sciousness and  the  reason,  not  by  sacrificing  one  to  the 
other,  but  by  uniting  them.    Nor  is  this  truly  a  difficult 
task.    For  the  demand  of  consciousness  is  not  to  be  be- 
lieved, but  to  be  explained,  or  accounted  for.    No  theory 
can  be  accepted  by  mankind  that  puts  consciousness  aside ; 
we  demand  that  whatever  explanation  is  given  of  any- 
thing, it  should  show  satisfactorily  why  our  consciousness 
in  respect  to  it  should  be  such  as  it  is.    To  assert  more 
authority  in  consciousness  than  this  betrays  a  want  of  con- 
sideration ;  that  would  be  to  claim  for  ourselves  an  infal- 
libility extremely  hard  to  establish,  and  certainly  alike 
needless  and  unsanctioned  by  experience.    For  what  error 
is  there  that  might  not  have  claimed  the  warrant  of  con- 
sciousness, as  the  term  is  now  used,  until  it  was  known  to 
*be  an  error.    Is  not  every  necessary  belief  based  on  the 
evidence  of  consciousness  ?    But  the  beliefs  that  are  nec- 
essary to  us  vary  with  our  knowledge.    Nor  is  security 
attained  by  claiming  authority  for  universal  belief  alone. 
Not  to  speak  of  the  extreme  difficulty  of  ascertaining  in 
what  opinions  all  men  do  truly  agree,  such  universality 
only  proves  a  common  condition ;  causes  of  error  aflFecting 
all  men  produce  universal  errors.     The  motion  of  the 
earth  is  an  obvious  instance. 

The  authority  of  consciousness  is  a  refuge  from  scepti- 
cism, adogma  laid  down  for  fear  there  should  be  found  no 
authority  at  all ;  but  happily  the  danger  is  illusory,  for  the 
refuge  is  vain.  If  consciousness  had  truly  possessed  au- 
thority, it  would  never  have  been  necessary  to  assert  it. 
Least  of  all  so  to  reiterate  the  assertion  as  has  been 
found  needful  in  recent  times  ;  a  truly  efficient  authority 
does  not  need  constant  proclamation.    The  best  interests 


I 


I 


of  man,  the  interests  of  morality  and  religion,  receive  a 
grievous  wrong  in  being  staked  on  the  authority  of  con- 
sciousness. Consciousness  can  bear  no  such  burden  :  it  is 
too  weak,  too  fallible,  as  indeed  the  result  has  proved. 
And  what  are  they  to  do,  whom  the  best  exercise  they  can 
make  of  their  reasoning  powers  conducts  to  conclusions 
opposed  to  those  which  we  regard  as  the  deliverances  of 
consciousness,  and  who  think  that  such  exercise  of  their 
powers  is  a  better  guide  ?  Are  their  toils  and  aspirations 
to  be  nothing  to  us  ;  shall  we  have  no  sympathy  to  give, 
no  counsel  to  receive,  are  we  only  to  say  to  them,  you  must 
think  as  I  do  ?  Why  has  God  made  them  to  think  diflfer- 
ently  from  us,  but  that  we  should  mutually  impart  and 
receive  ? 

Consciousness  claims  to  be  accounted  for,  not  to  be  be- 
lieved. To  account  for  our  consciousness  is  the  object  of 
all  inquiry.  All  acquisition  of  knowledge,  all  discovery 
of  truth,  consists  in  learning  rightly  to  account  for  our 
consciousness,  or  for  our  perceiving  as  we  do.  It  is  the 
universal  problem ;  the  work  of  science  and  of  philoso- 
phy alike,  which  encounter  the  same  task  in  different  de- 
partments, to  show  what  the  true  relations  of  things  are, 
and  why  they  must  impress  us  as  they  do. 

That  consciousness  demands  to  be  accounted  for,  and 
not  to  be  received  as  authoritative,  may  be  made  evident 
by  familiar  instances.  We  perceive,  or  are  conscious  of 
(for  the  terms  are  used  interchangeably  in  respect  to  this 
argument)  light,  in  the  sense  of  luminousness,  as  existing 
around  us.  Yet  we  do  not  believe  this  ;  we  account  for 
our  consciousness  by  the  existence  of  motion  or  of  some- 
thing equally  distinct  from  luminousness,  external  to  our 
eye,  and  are  content ;  we  feel  that  all  the  demand  made  by 
our  consciousness  is  satisfied.  It  is  the  same  in  innumer- 
able other  cases.    In  truth,  the  idealist  argument  is  based 


i 


'1 


us 


OF  SCEPTICISM. 


[B.  II. 


C.  IV.J 


OF  SCEPTICISM. 


139 


upon  the  autliority  of  consciousness,  the  reply  consists  in 
an  attempt  to  account  for  it.     For  the  idealist  maintains 
that  there  is  truly  luminousness  and  not  motion  around  us ; 
he  asserts  that  that  which  causes  his  consciousness  must 
be  such  as  his  consciousness  testifies.    But  the  assertion  of 
an  unknowable  matter,  against  idealism,  accounts  for  our 
consciousness  by  the  existence  of  something  very  unlike 
that  which  consciousness  testifies.    And  that  this  is  the 
better  method  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the  unbiassed 
sense  of  mankind  gives  it  the  preference.*    In  truth,  we 
can  only  be  satisfied  when  our  consciousness  is  accounted 
for ;  the  mere  assertion  of  its  authority  always  leaves  a 
dissatisfaction.     It  divides  men  into  two  camps ;  some 
asserting  its  finality,  others  reasoning  against  it.     And  it 
should  have  this  effect,  for  to  assert  authority  in  conscious- 
ness implies  imperfect  knowledge,  which  implies  wrong 
conception.    When  our  knowledge  is  perfect  on  any  sub- 
ject, we  can  always  account  for  our  consciousness.    To 
claim  authority  for  it,  while  unaccounted  for,  is  to  convert 
ignorance  into  an  argument.    Consciousness  alone  is  neces- 
sarily defective;  it  can  vouch  only  for  our  feelings;  it 
cannot  embrace  the  truth  of  things,  but  only  the  mode  in 
which  we  feel  them.    From  the  same  facts  different  beings 
have  different  consciousness ;  a  blind  man  must  be  con- 
scious of  darkness  as  the  condition  of  the  world,  but  his 
consciousness   is   accounted  for   by  his  defect  of  sight 
What  consciousness  vouches  for,  in  every  case,  is,  that  we 
have  a  certain  experience  and  nothing  more. 
There  is  no  ground  for  the  fear  that,  if  our  conscious- 


•  The  defect  of  the  idealist  argument  is,  that  it  does  not  account  for  our 
consciousness ;  it  builds  upon  it  as  a  basis,  and  does  not  show  it  necessary. 
To  account  for  anything  is  to  show  it  necessary.  To  show  our  various 
states  of  consciousness  to  bo  necessary  is  the  entire  work  of  inquiry. 


t 


I 


ness  be  not  authoritative,  our  demand  for  certain  and 
trustworthy  knowledge  cannot  be  fulfilled.  We  imagine 
this  only  because  we  have  been  in  too  great  haste,  and 
could  not  suspend  our  opinion  and  inquire.  The  feeling 
indeed  is  natural,  and  is  confirmed  by  the  result  of  past 
endeavors  to  attain  certainty  upon  other  principles.  Yet 
it  may  be  observed  that  the  appeal  to  consciousness  also 
fails  to  give  certainty  ;  its  evidence  is  diversely  interpreted, 
disputed,  denied.  And  the  past  attempts  to  arrive  at  cer- 
tainty have  failed  for  the  very  reason  for  which  the  appeal 
to  consciousness  also  fails.  They  are  indeed  but  appeals  to 
consciousness  under  another  form.  They  agree  in  taking 
ourselves,  our  impressions,  as  the  standard  of  being,  and  in 
affirming  that  which  is  to  us  to  be  that  which  is.  None  of 
them  seek,  by  exploring  man's  own  state,  to  ascertain  in 
what  respects  that  which  is  to  him  differs  from  that  which 
truly  is.* 

But  how  evident  is  the  omission  we  have  made ;  how 
simple  to  repair  it.  The  light  which  is  thrown  on  the  past 
vain  struggles  to  attain  certainty  is  perfect.  That  which 
is  to  us  cannot  be  that  which  is,  because  our  own  state  of 
being  must  have  a  share  in  determining  what  shall  be  to 
us.  This  we  have  overlooked,  and  have  struggled,  there- 
fore, necessarily  in  vain,  to  frame  to  our  thought  a  con- 
sistent or  intelligible  scheme  of  things.  It  is  no  paradox, 
no  difficult  or  unusual  mode  of  thought,  that  the  things 
which  are  to  us,  or  are  real  to  us,  are  not  truly  real.  It 
is  self-evident  and  necessary.  And  this  is  the  whole  secret 
of  scepticism.  That  form  of  opinion  must  have  existed, 
ought  to  exist.    Scepticism  is  but  the  denial  that  that 


•  This  may  be  demurred  to  on  behalf  of  Kent  and  others,  who  regard 
time  and  space  as  modes  of  thought.  But  the  statement  seems  to  be  justified: 
the  question  relates  to  man's  being,  not  to  his  modes  of  thinking. 


140 


OF  SCEPTICISM. 


[B.  n. 


C.  IV.] 


OF  SCEPTICISM. 


141 


which  is  to  us  truly  is.    There  is  nothing  evil  in  this,  it  is 
true.     It  is  but  the  bringing  out  into  view  that  which  is 
involved  in  our  own  principles,  but  which  we  try  to  con. 
ceal  from  ourselves.    Scepticism  is  not  an  enemy  but  a 
friend,  and  does  us  apparent  mischief  only  through  our 
own  falseness  and  mistake.    For  do  not  we  ourselves  say 
that  the  essence  and  very  fact  of  being,  or  of  that  which  is, 
is  not  to  be  known  or  thought  by  man  ?    Why  then  do  we 
find  fault  with  him  who  puts  our  principles  into  a  practical 
form,  and  says  :  this  which  we  know  and  think  is  not  that 
which  is  ?    There  is  no  more  in  scepticism,  in  its  relation 
to  the  intellect,  than  this :  our  own  most  necessary  and 
valuable  principles  applied.     If  scepticism  be  morally 
harmful,  we  must  remember  that  it  has  its  root  in  our 
inconsistency  of  thought,  and  that  it  lies  in  our  power  to 
do  away  with  these  effects  by  ceasing  to  be  inconsistent. 
We  look  on  scepticism  as  if  it  were  some  monstrous  ten- 
dency in  man  to  deny  that  which  is  true,  to  refuse  certainty 
when  it  is  legitimately  offered.     But  it  is  not  so  ;  there  is 
no  such  tendency  in  man  :  no  man  loves  doubt  for  its  own 
sake.    Men  deny  that  that  is  which  is  to  us,  repudiating 
an  authority  in  our  feelings  ;  they  deny  that  we  can  truly 
know  by  sense  or  intellect.     But  herein  they  speak  truly 
and  not  falsely ;  we  ourselves  say  the  same  thing.    That 
which  is  to  us  is  not. 

We  need  not,  therefore,  fear  scepticism  :  it  is  evil  only 
because  we  have  placed  knowledge  on  a  false  basis.  We 
do  injustice  to  ourselves,  and  think  too  meanly  of  the 
Creator's  bounty.  For  it  is  only  our  false  persuasion  of 
the  true  existence  of  that  which  is  to  us,  that  embarrasses 
us  with  paradoxes,  and  makes  us  think  our  faculties  too 
poor  for  our  desires.  Truly  our  faculties  must  be  mis- 
trusted, our  aspirations  checked,  if  our  reason,  in  denying 
that  which  consciousness  seems  to  teach  us,  were  denying 


i 


i 


that  which  ought  to  be  believed.  The  doctrine  of  man's 
incapacity  for  dealing  with  any  problem  that  can  be  pre- 
sented to  him  has  no  other  foundation  than  this.  It  is 
based,  therefore,  not  on  a  true  humility,  but  on  pride  and 
self  confidence  ;  on  our  firm  presumption  that  that  which 
we  feel  to  be  must  be. 

The  problem  that  is  truly  submitted  to  us  to  solve  is  to 
account  for  our  consciousness  ;  or,  from  that  which  is  to  us, 
to  ascertain  what  truly  is.  Surely  this  is  a  simple  and  in 
no  way  intractable  problem,  and  one,  moreover,  in  respect 
to  which  all  the  previous  exercise  of  our  faculties,  all  the 
course  of  human  observation  and  tliinking,  prepare  for  our 
success,  and  supply  principles  for  our  guidance.  We  need 
only  to  apply  the  established  and  evident  rules  of  inquiry 
according  to  the  nature  of  the  case,  remembering  that  it  is 
a  question  of  being,  and  not  of  thinking,  of  life  and  not  of 
intellect.  By  study  and  observation,  by  patient  watchful- 
ness, and  suspension  of  opinion  until  the  materials  for 
judging  are  acquired,  remembering  that  we  do  not  natu- 
rally know  that  which  is,  but  have  to  learn  it  humbly,  we 
must  first  ascertain  what  elements  in  that  which  we  feel  to 
be  are  due  to  our  own  condition  ;  what  qualities  or  modes 
of  existence,  in  that  which  is  perceived,  cannot  truly  belong 
to  that  which  is.  These  will  show  us  what  our  own  con- 
dition is,  and  the  fact  then  will  stand  distinctly  before  our 
apprehension  in  its  true  nature.  Our  consciousness  will  be 
accounted  for.  We  shall  understand  why  the  fact,  being 
such  as  it  is,  must  affect  us  as  it  does.  And  scepticism,  at 
least,  will  be  no  more  a  foe. 

We  are  apt  to  think  that  if  consciousness  do  not  give 
certainty,  if  we  have  not  true  knowledge  directly  from  its 
evidence,  then  we  can  never  know.  But  the  contrary  of 
this  is  the  fact ;  if  we  were  thrown  on  the  direct  aflBrma- 


142 


OF  SCEPTICISM. 


[B.  II. 


CIV.] 


OF  SCEPTICISM. 


14g 


tions  of  consciousness,  then  we  could  not  have  true  knowl- 
edge, but  only  a  presumption  more  or  less  strong  ;  which 
indeed  is  proved  by  the  language  held  by  those  who  main- 
tain its  authority.     That  consciousness  requires  to  be 
interpreted,  is  the  very  reason  that  we  can  have  certainty 
in  our  belief.     Consciousness,  though  it  does  not  give 
direct  knowledge,  affords  the  elements  of  knowledge,  a 
basis  for  absolute  conviction,  to  be  worked  out  by  the 
conjoint  exercise  of  all  our  powers.     Consciousness,  and 
reasoning,  and  conscience  or  the  moral  sense,  all  have  their 
necessary  part  in  the  determination  of  that  final  question. 
What  is  it  that  exists  ?    Man  must  give  all  his  powers  to 
that  work,  must  consecrate  to  it  his  whole  nature.    He 
errs  grievously  when  he  strives  to  snatch  a  fallacious  cer- 
tainty by  any  shorter  process.     He  must  submit  to  curb 
his  impatience.    Scepticism  avenges  the  partial  exercise 
of  his  powers ;  it  means  that  there  are  elements  in  liis 
nature  which  have  not  received  their  due  weight  in  the 
determination  of  the  question,  faculties  which  have  not 
contributed  their  part.     Scepticism  is  a  symptom,  not  a 
disease ;  demanding  not  to  be  itself  suppressed,  but  that 
the  disease  be  cured. 

Nor  can  it  be  suppressed  ;  it  must  be  embraced  and 
turned  into  a  support.    Denial  cannot  be  cured  by  deny- 
ing, it  must  be  swallowed  up  in  affirmation.    Evil  must 
be  overcome  with  good.    The  sceptic  says  in  effect, '  That 
representation  may  suit  its  purpose  very  well,  but  what  is 
to  be  said  of  this  which  I  find  in  myself,  and  which  is  in 
opposition  to  it  ?    I  do  not  believe  it.    There  is  more  in 
the  world  than   that  view  takes   in.'     Nor  can  he  be 
silenced,  nor  ought  he,  except  by  the  enlarging  of  our 
hearts  and  intellects  to  embrace  all  that  is  found  within 
humanity  as  the  foundation  of  our  thought,  so  that  there 


I 


i   " 


shall  remain  nothing  to  oppose :  no  disharmony,  no  vio- 
lence. Then  scepticism  must  cease,  it  can  be  thought  of 
no  more,  its  spring  is  cut  off  for  ever. 

Most  instructive,  also,  is  it  to  note  that  there  is  virtually 
a  twofold  scepticism,  answering  to  the  two  parts  of  man's 
nature  which  are  set  aside  by  our  doctrine  of  the  author- 
ity of  consciousness.  There  is  a  scepticism  of  the  reason 
and  a  scepticism  of  the  conscience,  theoretical  and  relig- 
ious. Some  speculative  men  will  not  cease  to  amuse  them- 
selves by  denying  the  existence  of  external  things  on  the 
ground  of  logic,  and  use  such  arguments  to  ward  off  ap- 
peals which  may  be  unwelcome.  Some  religious  men  will 
insist  that  this  world  is  a  shadow,  a  dream,  an  illusion, 
not  truly  real  at  all,  and  that  the  only  world  that  deserves 
our  regard  is  unseen  and  future.  Both  feel  that  there  is 
that  within  them  which  the  argument  from  consciousness 
ignores  and  tramples  upon. 

The  innocence  and  usefulness  of  the  sceptical  argument 
are  evident,  when  a  general  view  is  taken  of  the  problem 
with  which  our  faculties  have  to  deal.  We  have  a  certain 
state  of  consciousness,  and  a  certain  perception  of  things 
apart  from  ourselves.  These  are  the  elements  from  which 
we  have  to  gather,  so  far  as  possible,  a  true  knowledge. 
For  this  work  we  have  three  powers ;  sense,  intellect,  and 
conscience.  The  problem  evidently  is  to  harmonize  all 
these  constituents  of  our  being,  to  fulfil  them  all :  to  learn 
why  our  sensations  should  be  such  as  they  are,  in  a  way 
perfectly  conformable  to  reason,  and  embodying  also  the 
demands  of  our  moral  nature.  For  this  purpose  we  must 
pursue  two  chief  inquiries:  What  appears  to  us?  and 
why  does  it  appear  to  us  as  it  does  ?  or,  What  is  our  own 
state,  and  in  what  way  does  that  state  modify  the  impres- 
sions we  receive  from  that  which  is  apart  from  us  ?  Our 
own  state  must  be  learnt  by  the  observation  of  that  which 


144 


OP  SCEPTICISM. 


[B.  II. 


we  perceive ;  for,  as  we  are,  so  must  our  perception  be. 
It  cannot  therefore  be  the  fact,  that  that  which  appears  to 
us  cuii  be  that  which  truly  is,  because  our  own  state  modi- 
fies our  perception.  Therefore,  from  the  appearance,  or 
the  phenomenon,  which  we  know  cannot  be,  we 'have  to 

f  learn  that  which  is,  by  setting  aside,  if  we  can  detect 

them,  those  qualities  which  are  due  to  ourselves,  or  to  our 
own  state  of  being.  Practically,  this  inquiry  brings  us  to 
two  results :  first,  we  find  ourselves  feeling  wrongly,  for 
that  which  appears  is  felt  by  us,  and  thought  by  us,  to  be 
that  which  is.  We  do  not,  except  by  an  effort  of  reflec- 
tion, disentangle  ourselves  from  this  illusion,  and  when  we 
recognise  it  to  be  such,  still  the  feeling  remains  the  same. 
By  this  we  know  that  there  is  a  want  or  defect  in  man  ; 
for  the  phenomenon,  which  is  not  and  cannot  truly  be,  is 
real  to  us,  affects  as  real  that  which  we  feel  to  be  our- 
selves. We  recognise  a  defectiveness  in  man,  but  this  is 
no  strange  conclusion.  It  is  not  less  self-evident  than  it 
is  demonstrable  by  observation. 

And  when  we  look  again,  to  ascertain  what  elements  in 
that  which  we  perceive,  or  that  which  is  to  us,  should  be 
attributed  to  our  own  condition,  a  truly  marvellous  sim- 
plicity appears.  For  we  discover  that  certain  of  these 
elements  are  negative,  denoting  defect  or  absence.  We 
perceive  an  absolute  absence  of  true  action.  This  nega- 
tive element  in  that  which  is  perceived,  therefore,  we 
know  at  once  must  be  due  to  ourselves.  For  two  reasons: 
first,  that  we  have  already  recognised  in  ourselves  defect, 
which  must  cause  such  appearance ;  and,  secondly,  that 
the  very  fact  of  its  being  negative  renders  it  impossible 
that  inaction  should  belong  to  that  which  is.  We  take, 
therefore,  this  negative  element  in  that  which  appears  to 
be  due  to  ourselves.  And  now  the  problem  is  in  one  sense 
solved.     We  have  attained  a  general  conception  which  is 


I 


C.  IV J 


OF  SCEPTICISM. 


145 


appropriate  to  the  case,  have  placed  ourselves  at  least  in  a 
right  attitude.     We  know  that  the  negative  qualities,  in 
that  which  we  perceive,  do  not  belong  to  that  which  is  ; 
we  know  that  there  is  defect  of  being  in  ourselves.   Herein 
all  our  nature  receives  its  full  satisfaction  :  sense,  and  in- 
tellect, and  conscience.     Our  consciousness  is  accounted 
for.     We   understand  why  our   perception   and    feeling 
should  be  such  as  they  are :  why  a  world  that  has  not 
negative  qualities,  a  world  of  true  being,  spiritual  and 
eternal,  should  make  us  perceive  a  world  inert  and  want- 
ing in  being,  a  world  the  existence  of  which  can  be  dis- 
proved.    The  intellect  recognises  a  satisfying  cause  of  our 
perception,  and  a  satisfying  reason  why  that  perception 
should  be  such  as  it  is  :  the  conscience  feels  that  it  is  true. 
The  two  portions  of  our  knowledge,  relating  to  ourselves 
and  to  that  which  is  apart  from  us,  are  brought  into  a 
just  correspondence.     Why  that  which  is  not  must  be  felt 
by  us  to  be,  we  know  ;  for  that  which  we  feel  to  be  must 
have  qualities  which  cannot  pertain  to  that  which  truly  is, 
qualities  that  are  opposed  to  being.     We  understand  that 
there  must  be  less  in  that  which  is  to  us  than  in  that  which 
is  ;  that  the  world  must  be  perceived  as  having  defect  in 
it ;  that  it  must  be  to  us  physical,  because  it  is  felt  as  in- 
active.    We  understand  how  things  that  pass  away,  and 
cannot  therefore  be  truly  said  to  be,  are  realities  to  us  ; 
how  our  existence  is  in  time.  We  understand  why  unquench- 
able aspirations  in  our  hearts  make  us  long  for  a  higher, 
worthier  state  of  being  ;  why  our  nature  is  at  strife  with 
itself,  why  we  cannot  but  look  forward  to  a  future  differ- 
ent from  the  present :    why  all  thought   has  been  per- 
plexed :  why  we  have  been  trying  to  conceive  negations 
as  existing,  the  phenomenon  as  fact ;  why  we  have  failed : 
whence  the  belief  has  arisen  that  we  must  ever  fail,  and 
that  our  faculties  are  insufficient  for  our  instincts.    For 
7 


146 


OF   SCEPTICISM. 


[B.  II. 


we  have  tliought  that  that  which  we  feel  to  be  corresponds 
with  that  which  exists,  not  regarding  that  defect  in  man 
which  makes  us  feel  as  we  do ;  and  our  reason,  therefore, 
denies  the  being  of  that  which  we  feel  to  be,  our  con- 
science asserts  a  being  above  any  that  intellect  or  sense 
can  reach.     We  see  that  all  the  past  experience  of  man 
must  have  been  such  as  it  has  been,  leading  him  by  the  only 
possible  way  to  discover  his  errors,  to  recognise  his  true 
relations,  and  to  comprehend  the  meaning  of  his  experience. 
Thus  scepticism  is  absorbed,  and  turned  to  good  account ; 
conducing  to  certainty  in  thought,  and  piety  in  feeling! 
It  is  not  possibly  dangerous  any  more,  for  there  is  nothing 
in  us  that  is  over-ridden  or  oppressed.    There  is  no  strife, 
because  no  violence  is  done  ;  no  tension,  because  no  coer- 
cion is  exercised.    For  the  doctrine  that  is  asserted  is 
axiomatic  and  self-evident,  the  rebellious  reason  finds  all 
its  demands  anticipated.    It  is  granted  that  that  which 
has  properties  which  disprove  its  being  is  not :  that  which 
IS  is  that  which  truly  acts  ;  it  is  that  which  must  be.    Its 
properties  are  those  which  cannot  be  denied  of  being,  be- 
cause they  are  involved  in  the  very  meaning  of  the  term. 
No  man  denies  that  something  exists  :  that  being  is.    That 
were  a  contradiction  in  the  very  words  ;  if  there  were  not 
something  that  exists,  there  could   be  no   phenomenon 
nothing  could  appear.     Of  this  existence,  then,  it  is  as^ 
serted,  that  it  has  the  necessary  properties  of  being,  that 
negative  properties  do  not  belong  t»  it,  that  it  is  not  tran- 
sient, or  in  time,  that  it  is  not  inert :  that,  therefore,  all 
our  experience,  inasmuch  as  it  must  be  caused  by  that 
which  IS,  and  cannot  be  produced  by  that  which  is  not  but 
only  appears  to  be,  must  be  caused  by  that  which  is  not  in 
time  but  is  eternal ;  and  is  not  inert  but  is  spiritual :  that 
this  18  why  that  which  is  can  neither  be  perceived  by 
sense,  nor  grasped  by  thought.    Sense  and  thou(rht  deal 


C.  IV.] 


OF  SCEPTICISM. 


147 


with  that  which  is  inert  and  in  time,  with  that  which  ap- 
pears ;  but  that  with  which  we  truly  have  to  do  is  not 
that  which  appears,  but  that  which  is,  and  to  know  which 
is  not  an  intellectual   but  a  spiritual  state.     In  this,  the 
demands  of  the  reasoning  faculties  are  fulfilled  ;  these  are 
self-evident  axiomatic  truths,  on  which  we  can  rest  with  a 
solid  and  unwavering  assurance.     And  the  more,  because 
the  higher  faculties  of  our  nature  find  herein  also  a  war- 
rant and  repose,  which  they  cannot  otherwise  know.    No 
task  of  argument  and  inference  is  laid  upon  them,  ungenial 
to  their  nature.     The  longing  for  God  meets  its  response. 
Not  afar  oflp,  not  to  be  realized  by  great' stretch  of  thought, 
not  separated  by  innumerable  existences  which  intervene 
between  Himself  and  us,  but  close  around  us,  nothing  be- 
tween Him  and  our  inmost  souls,  the  Being  with  whom  we 
have  to  do.    Not  to  be  perceived  by  sensuous  eye,  nor  con- 
ceived by  thought,  still  sensuous,  but  known  within  the 
heart.   And  seen  visibly,  as  alone  His  very  Life  and  Being 
could  be  made  manifest  to  us,  in  Him  who  first  showed  to 
man,  unknowing,  what  it  is  to  love. 

If  it  be  held  that  consciousness  alone  (and  even  in  oppo- 
sition to  some  other  tendencies  of  our  nature)  can  give 
certainty,  surely  much  more  should  it  be  granted  that  the 
consciousness,  the  intellect,  and  the  moral  sense,  united, 
should  afford  ground  for  certainty.  We  assume  that  they 
never  can  be  united,  because  all  attempts  to  unite  them 
hitlierto  have  failed  ;  but  for  this  failure  there  is  a  suffi- 
cient reason  in  the  fact  that  hitherto  regard  has  not  been 
paid  to  our  own  condition  of  being  in  its  influence  on  our 
r)erception.  An  essential  element  in  the  treatment  of  the 
problem  has  been  left  out. 

Again  :  if  consciousness  authoritatively  testifies  to  any- 
thing, surely  it  is  to  the  existence  of  that  which  we  directly 
perceive  by  our  senses  ;  to  the  existence  of  that  which  is 


148 


OF  SCEPTICISM. 


[B.  II. 


to  sense.     But  that  which  is  to  sense  differs,  in  innumer- 
able particulars,  from  that  which  is  to  thought  or  to  con- 
ception, and  we  arbitrarily  endeavor  to  make  conscious- 
ness vouch  for  the  latter.    There  is  a  twofold  weakness  in 
endeavoring  to  assert,  on  the  authority  of  consciousness, 
that  to  which  it  does  not  directly  testify,  but  which  rests 
on  inference.     Why  should  we  any  more  claim  to  base  on 
consciousness  that  which  is  to  our   intellect,  than  that 
which  is  to  our  sense?    We  give  up  the  latter,  willingly, 
at  the  bidding  of  inquiry  and  sound  reasoning, — why  not 
also  the  former  ?    No  scepticism  results  from  giving  up 
that  which  is  to  sense,  but  rather  greater  assurance  every 
way.    We  give  up  color,  as  existing  apart  from  us,  and 
think  of  motion,  and  feel  nothing  lost.     Why  should  we 
not,  equally  without  loss,  give  up  motion,  and  believe 
something  else  2*    The  denial  of  that  which  is  to  sense  is 
the  life  of  science  ;  might  not  the  denial  of  that  which  is 
to  intellect  be  the  life  of  a  true  knowledge  ?    It  is,  indeed, 
already  denied  in  words,  in  the  doctrine  that  the  essence 
of  things  is  unknown. 

Or,  again ;  if  it  be  not  denying  the  authority  of  con- 
8ciou3ness  to  deny  that  which  is  to  sense,  and  substitute 
for  it  that  which  is  to  intellect ;  if  consciousness  be  not 
held  to  testify  to  the  appearance  to  sense,  but  only  to  that 
which  may  reasonably  be  considered  the  cause  of  it ;  then 
neither  can  it  be  denying  the  authority  of  consciousness  to 
deny  that  which  is  to  the  intellect.  Consciousness  must 
be  held  to  testify,  not  to  the  '  appearance  to  the  intellect,' 
but  to  that  which  reasonably,  and  by  sound  inquiry,  may 
be  shown  to  be  the  cause  of  it.  Therefore,  to  assert  the 
spirituality  of  nature,  denying  that  which  is  to  our  thought. 


•  If  the  color  be  gnbjective  only,  why  not  the  motion  too?    If  the  eye 
alter  that  which  exists,  why  not  the  thought? 


0.  IV.] 


OF  SCEPTICISM. 


149 


is  truly,  and  in  the  best  sense,  to  assert  the  authority  of 
consciousness.     For  consciousness  testifies  emphatically  to 
the  reality  of  the  world,  to  its  existence  ;  to  affirm  the  re- 
ality against  the  seeming,  is  alone  to  carry  out  its  dictates. 
For  sense  and  intellect  do  not  exhaust  our  faculties  ;  there 
are  other  powers,  other  modes  of  apprehending  and  feeling 
besides  these.     And  these  other  faculties  have  their  author- 
ity also  ;  it  is  their  presence,  in  truth,  and  the  assertion  of 
their  claims,  that  unsettle  the  deductions  of  the  intellect 
from  sensuous  experience,  and  will  not  let  the  notions 
which  we  frame  in  that  way  rest  in  undisturbed  possession. 
The  claims  of  these  other  faculties  have  to  be  made  good, 
and  their  authority  duly  recognised,  in  our  idea  of  existence, 
before  we  can  have  peace.    Therefore,  in  denying  the  best 
conclusions  we  have  been  able  to  frame ;  in  landing  us  in 
perpetual  doubt ;  in  overthrowing  every  structure  we  could 
set  up ;  our  faculties  have  not  played  us  false,  have  not 
proved  their  incompetence.     They  have  established  their 
competence  rather  ;  hitherto,  at  least,  they  have  proved 
themselves  efficient.     They  have  established  a  claim  to 
confidence ;  for  they  have  saved  us  from  a  fatal,  though 
earnestly  desired,  security  and  repose  in  error.    We  wished 
to  draw  our  conclusions  before  we  had  examined  suffi- 
ciently, to  affirm  without  proof,  to  take  that  which  seems 
for  that  which  is;  but  the  faculties  God  has  given  us 
refuse.    Too  faithful  to  be  lulled  into  indolence,  or  crushed 
into  subjection,  they  have  toiled  in  their  appointed  task  : 
through  good  report  and  evil,  they  have  done  their  work  ; 
and  shall  stand  justified  yet,  to  the  confusion  of  our  selfish 
pride,  which  has  sought  to  pamper  our  own  indolence,  and 
justify  our  mistrust,  by  depreciating  God's  bounty  to  man- 
kind. 

It  is  of  no  avail  to  say  :  God  cannot  have  suffered  us  to 
be  under  illusion,  and  the  world  must  be  such  as  we  feel  it 


150 


OF  SCEPTICISM. 


[B.  II. 


to  be.    That  argument  is  suicidal,  it  refutes  itself.    For 
the  proof  that  we  are  under  illusion  is  not  avoided  by  that 
view.    Inasmuch  as  our  reason,  when  exercised  upon  the 
subject,  leads  to  a  result  which  we  affirm  to  be  false,  we 
are  still  under  illusion  ;  deluded  in  respect  to  our  intellect  • 
our  powers  do  still  deceive  us.    The  illusion  is  of  a  differ- 
ent kind,  but  it  is  not  less  illusion.    And,  in  truth,  what 
else  can  the  doctrine  of  the  incompetency  of  our  faculties 
and  of  our  inability  in  our  present  state  to  solve  the  prob- 
lems that  are  presented  to  us,  mean  but  that  we  are  under 
Illusion,  and  think  and  feel  erroneously  ;  that  the  impres- 
sions we  receive  from  that  which  is  do  not  correspond  to 
the  fact  because  of  our  defectiveness  ?     The  statements 
differ  in  form,  and  in  the  ideas  associated  with  them,  rather 
than  m  their  true  significance.    It  was  right  and  necessary 
that  men  should  have  spoken  as  they  did  ;  with  the  prob- 
lem unsolved,  and  evidently  baffling  all  attempts  to  solve 
It,  what  could  be  said,  but  that  their  powers  were  unequal 
to  the  task  ?    They  had  not  then  learnt  enough,  they  had 
not  the  means  essential  to  success  :  science  had  not  revealed 

Jretetion  ^^""'^  "^  *'"'  '"'^"''"^  *"'°^'°'  ^^^  '''^'■ 

And  what  are  the  facts  of  our  present  life,  which  seem 
80  marvellous  and  unaccountable,  but  the  very  experience 
which  alone  could  correspond  to,  and  expressf  the^ev  SI 
conditions  of  our  being  ?    Our  feeling,  our  consciousness 
our  existence  and  action  in  this  physical  and  temporal 
world,  what  are  they  but  the  only  way  in  which  the  phe- 
nomenon,  that  which  appears  and  is  not,  could  be  real  to 
us?    Our  perception,  our  immediate  and  necessarv  convic- 
tion of  the  existence  of  that  which  we  perceive  ^  its  si 
stantial,  solid   unquestionable  reality  to  us ;  it^  corres- 
pondence with  our  powers,  feelings,  activities,  desires  •  ite 
influence  over  ns,  and  response  to  us  in  ever;  way    what 


C.  IV.] 


OF  SCEPTICISM. 


161 


is  all  this  but  the  necessary  feeling  which  must  arise  in 
respect  to  the  forms  which  are  in  time,  when  the  fact,  or 
that  which  is  eternal,  is  unknown  and  unfelt  ?  In  what 
other  way  could  forms  be  facts  to  us  ?  And  that  they  must 
be  so  is  involved  in  the  universally  admitted  statement, 
that  the  true  essence  and  being  of  the  world  is  unknown. 
The  mystery  of  this  existence,  of  our  consciousness,  percep- 
tion, necessary  belief,  no  more  exists  as  it  existed  before. 
Let  man  be  conceived  wanting  in  the  true  being  by  which 
alone  he  can  be  conscious  of  the  true  being  of  the  universe, 
and  his  present  feeling  and  experience  must  be  the  result. 
He  must  be  conscious  in  this  present  way  ;  feeling  that  to 
be  real  in  which,  when  he  examines  it,  he  finds  reality  can- 
not be. 

Above  all,  there  must  be  in  nature  that  unutterable  and 
inexplicable  mystery,  that  infinitude  of  wonder  and  signifi- 
cance, speaking  to  us  of  things  so  much  above  us,  so  much 
above  anything  we  can  find  in  the  things  that  seem  to  us 
to  be  the  facts  ;  that  strange  disproportion  and  unmeetness 
between  the  life  of  nature  and  its  substance,  which  disap- 
points us  so  when  we  strive  to  penetrate  the  secret  of  its 
glory,  throwing  us  back  in  mere  amazement,  and  with  a 
doubt  within  our  hearts  which  we  cannot  but  resolve  to 
quell.  There  must  be  that  conflict  in  our  souls,  that  strife 
between  our  most  assured  convictions  and  resolves,  and 
the  poor  conclusions  of  the  sense-bound  intellect,  taking 
the  seeming  for  the  fact.  For  what  means  that  doubt,  and 
dissatisfaction,  and  impossibility  of  reconciling  our  con- 
victions, but  that  the  conceptions  we  form  of  the  world  do 
not  answer  to  that  which  we  feel,  are  not  adequate  to  the 
effects  which  it  produces  upon  us.  The  power  that  is  in 
nature  overweighs  and  makes  ridiculous  our  conception  of 
a  dead  material  substance.  That  which  acts  thus  on  us 
surely  must  be  active,  not  inert.  Truly.  But  why  then  is 
it  inert  to  us  ? 


CHAPTER    V. 

OP  POSITIVISM :    AND  THE  EELATIOX   OP  SCIENCE  TO 

PHILOSOPHY, 

Assailed,  but  not  enthralled. 

Still  it  may  be  asked,  why  should  we  not  rest  in  the 
natural  idea  of  a  real  existence,  of  which  the  properties 
are  inertness  and  resistance,  with  a  capacity  for  motion 
such  as  we  think  of  under  the  name  of  matter,  and  which 
we  seem  to  understand  so  well  until  we  are  called  upon  to 
put  the  opinion  to  the  test?    Why  should  we  not  believe 
that  such  an  existence  has  been  created,  even  though  we 
cannot  conceive  how  it  can  be,  and  find  ourselves  driven 
into  contradictions  when  we  argue  respecting  it?    la  it 
not  better  to  remain  in  such  an  assurance  as  that  acceptance 
of  our  natural  ideas  may  give  us,  and  to  adjust  our  con- 
ceptions  of  spiritual  things,  and  our  belief  respecting  a 
higher  existence,  to  that  view  of  the  world  ;  pursuing 
rather  questions  of  a  practical  bearing,  in  respect  to  which 
we  can  attain  definite  results  ?    Why  should  our  thoughts 
be  unsettled  :  if  these  things  are  not  truly  as  we  feel  them 
to  be,  IS  it  not  better,  nevertheless,  that  we  should  believe 
them  to  be  so  ? 

A  fatal  objection  lies  against  this  compromise.  It  can- 
not be  carried  out.  Men  refuse  to  be  bound  by  it  Nor 
^n  any  means  be  fomid  of  giving  it  a  practical*  cfi-ect. 
He  who  argues  against  the  unflinching  pursuit  of  truth 

[152] 


c.  v.] 


OF  POSITIVISM. 


153 


cuts  away  the  basis  of  all  argument,  and  man's  best  instincts 
take  part  against  him.  Whatever  the  truth  may  be,  it  must 
be  better  to  know  it  than  to  be  in  error ;  it  must  be  a 
sacred  and  preeminent  duty  to  accept  it.  Even  if  we  can 
have  no  knowledge,  it  is  better  to  know  our  necessary 
ignorance. 

This  is  Positivism  :  the  denial  that  man  can  have 
knowledge  rightly  so  called.  Positivism  accepts  the  result 
of  the  argument  which  lands  us  in  universal  denial,  and 
seeks  to  adapt  man's  actions  to  that  opinion  of  his  con- 
dition. It  says  :  *  All  human  knowledge  is  relative  ;  it  is 
knowledge  only  of  that  which  appears,  not  of  that  which 
IS.  All  things  that  we  can  perceive  or  think  are  phe- 
nomena, not  truly  facts  or  existences.  The  relations  of 
that  which  appears  we  can  know,  but  deeper  we  cannot 
penetrate.  Nor  need  we  wish  to  do  so,  for  these  relations 
of  phenomena  are  all  that  concern  us,  all  that  in  any  way 
aflfects  our  well-being  or  our  duty.  Man's  life,  in  short,  is 
a  life  that  has  to  do  only  with  appearances  and  their  rela- 
tions ;  it  is  not  his  part  to  inquire  concerning  existence.' 

Positivism  tlms  denies  that  the  truth  of  things  answers 
to  our  impressions ;  in  this  respect  well  representing  the 
tendency  of  science  (whose  name  it  especially  assumes)  to 
exclude  ourselves,  and  any  mental  necessities  whatever  of 
our  own,  as  a  standard  of  that  which  is.  It  lays  down  the 
principle,  that  that  which  is  to  man  is  not  that  which  is, 
and  repudiates  any  inferences  founded  on  the  true  existence 
of  that  which  he  perceives.  Of  necessity  positivism  denies 
matter  ;  for  it  denies  that  the  world  that  exists  corresponds 
to  that  whicli  appears.  In  other  words,  this  world,  which 
is  material,  exists  only  relatively  to  us ;  that  which  truly 
exists  may  be  different.  The  phenomenon  is  one  thing,  the 
fact  (or  absolute)  is  another,  but  with  the  latter  we  have 
no  concern.  And  this  ground  is  taken  by  the  positivist 
7* 


154 


OP  POSITIVISM. 


[B.  II. 


for  the  express  reason  that  it  is  practically  the  best.  He 
lays  it  down,  that  through  pretending  to  any  other  knowl- 
edge than  that  of  appearances,  man's  powers  are  perverted, 
and  his  efforts  misapplied.  Pointing  to  the  past  history 
of  philosophy,  he  says,  only  mischief  has  come  from  the 
belief  in  the  reality  of  that  which  we  feel  to  be,  of  that 
which  alone  we  can  know.  Men  have  wasted  their  labor 
in  pursuits  that  are  necessarily  fruitless,  and  have  turned 
aside  from  the  works  which  alone  can  truly  benefit  them. 
The  remedy  for  the  evils  of  the  world  is  to  know,  and  be 
content  in  knowing,  that  we  have  to  do  with  phenomena 
alone,  which  are  real  only  to  man.* 

It  is  vain,  therefore,  to  assert  that  we  should  believe  in 
the  true  reality  of  that  which  we  conceive  (the  material 
world),  on  account  of  the  benefit  of  that  belief,  when  so 
large  and  so  powerful  a  body  of  men  assert  that  such 
belief  is  above  all  things  mischievous,  a  chief  source  indeed 
of  all  our  practical  evils.  There  can,  at  least,  be  no  end 
of  strife  in  that  assertion.  It  is  met  by  the  counter  asser- 
tion that  we  ought  above  all  things  to  know  tliat  the 
things  we  perceive  are  but  appearances.  In  vain  we 
struggle  to  make  for  ourselves  a  place  of  rest,  in  which  we 
may  cling  undisturbed  to  our  natural  impressions,  and  hold 
fast  to  that  which  seems  good  and  right  to  ourselves.  We 
are  driven  to  face  the  problem  of  our  existence ;  we  may 
not  shrink  from  it.  If  a  belief  in  the  true  reality  of  that 
which  is  real  to  us  cannot  be  maintained  by  argument ;  if 
it  have  no  valid  basis  in  the  supposed  authority  of  con- 
sciousness ;  if  it  be  so  widely  aflSrmed  to  be  perniciou.^ 
instead  of  beneficial ;  what  are  we  to  say  ?  Shall  we  s])ut 
ourselves  up  in  a  mere  resolution  to  believe,  isolating  our- 
selves from  the  world's  work,  or  shall  we  fairly  look  the 


*  PoBitivism  being  in  trutb  an  extreme  idealism. 


c.  v.] 


OF  POSITIVISM. 


165 


question  in  the  face ;  fairly,  because  unfearingly  ?  For 
why  should  we  be  afraid  to  let  go  our  conceptions  ?  Is 
not  God's  world  infinite,  and  infinitely  better  than  we  can 
possibly  conceive  ? 

And  nothing  can  be  more  satisfactory  than  the  result  of 
the  inquiry  on  positivist  grounds.  Positivism  seeks  to  set 
aside  philosophy,  or  the  inquiry  into  that  which  is,  and  to 
substitute  for  it  science,  or  the  observation  of  that  which 
appears.  By  the  study  of  phenomena  and  their  laws,  to 
predict  the  future,  for  the  regulation  of  human  actions,  is 
the  sole  object  which  it  permits  to  man.  But  the  conclu- 
sion which  is  thus  set  forth  has  not  been  established.  It 
is  true  that  science  consists  in  the  study  of  phenomena  and 
laws  alone,  and  has  no  reference  to  the  fact  of  existence  ; 
but  it  is  not  proved  that  its  relation  to  philosophy  is  that 
of  successor  and  destroyer.  There  is  another  part  which 
it  may  take,  and  for  which  it  may  be  better  adapted  ;  that 
of  servant  and  renovator. 

In  bringing  science  and  philosophy  into  relation,  and 
marking  the  links  which  unite  them,  and  determine  their 
mutual  destiny,  positivism  does  an  essential  service  ;  but  it 
is  not  always  given  to  a  man  rightly  to  interpret  a  relation 
he  is  the  first  to  perceive.  Science  labors  so  strenuously 
in  her  work  of  observing  phenomena  and  tracing  laws,  and 
achieves  such  triumphs  in  that  field,  that  it  is  naturally 
long  before  it  is  perceived  that  she  has  any  other  or  higher 
task.  Science  has  been  conceived  simply  as  the  instrument 
by  which  our  understanding  of  phenomenal  relations  is  to 
be  enlarged,  and  our  practical  command  over  phenomena 
extended,  by  ever-increasing  knowledge  of  their  laws. 
But  we  have  seen  that  there  is  another  possible  result  of 
science,  in  addition  to  greater  knowledge  of  phenomenal 
relations  :  that  it  may  also  teach  us  something  of  ourselves ; 


156 


OP  POSITIVISM. 


[B.  II. 


and  may  show  us  that  some  condition  perceived  as  apart 
from  man  should  have  its  cause  looked  for  within  him. 
By  the  nature  of  science,  as  the  study  of  that  which  is  per- 
ceived, it  has  an  essential  adaptation  to  this  result.    And 
if  this  be  so,  if  through  scientific  study  of  phenomena,  we 
are  made  to  know  our  own  condition,  and  to  understand 
that  a  quality,  or  mode  of  existence,  in  that  which  is  per- 
ceived, does  not  truly  belong  to  that  which  is,  then  it  is 
evident,  also,  that  philosophy  stands  in  quite  a  new  relation 
to  the  problem  with  which  it  seeks  to  deal.    The  experience 
which  demonstrates  its  incompetency  in  the  past  has  no 
force  in  respect  to  the  future,  for  the  conditions  of  the 
problem  are  altered.    It  was  before :   from  that  which  ap- 
pears to  discover  that  which  is,  our  own  condition,  on 
which  the  mode  of  our  perception  depends,  being  unknown. 
Now  it  is :  our  own  condition  being  known,  from  that 
which  appears  to  discover  that  which  is.     The  latter 
problem  being  as  evidently  possible,  and  within  reach  of 
the  human  faculties,  as  the  former  is  beyond  them.     J^'or 
philosophy  has  found  her  problem  insoluble  hitherto,  not 
because  man  has  not  the  requisite  faculties,  but  because  the 
conditions,  or  data,  essential  to  a  determination  of  it,  were 
not  at  her  command.    Science  supplies  the  indispensable 
element,  for  lack  of  which  philosophy  has  trod  a  weary 
pound  in  vain.    It  transfers  the  negative  element,  the  per- 
ceived defect,  to  man  ;  giving  demonstration  of  an  inaction, 
which  cannot  belong  to  that  which  truly  exists,  in  that 
which  man  is  conscious  of. 

In  truth,  the  relation  of  science  to  philosophy  is  very 
beautiful,  and  exhibits,  in  an  eminent  light,  the  life  and 
mutual  dependence  which  mark  the  progress  of  human 
thought.  Man's  strivings  after  knowledge,  in  all  his 
tortuous  windings  and  blind  errors,  are  not  mere  idle 


c.  v.] 


OF  POSITIVISM. 


167 


I 


waste,  but  form  a  mutually  connected  and  balanced  whole, 
no  part  of  which  is  unnecessary,  and  which  tends  with  per- 
fect aim  to  the  development  of  his  nature. 

For  man's  true  work  is  that  to  which  his  instincts 
prompt  him  ;  to  learn  that  which  is  ;  to  pass  beyond  and 
and  through  the  mere  seeming,  to  the  sacred  fact  of  being. 
But  in  this  effort  he  fails,  and  is  baffled.  Over  and  over 
again  he  fails,  for  he  takes  the  true  being  to  be  what  seems 
to  him.  He  seeks  the  absolute  ;  but  this  absolute  he  con- 
ceives to  be,  first,  that  which  he  can  see,  or  otherwise  per- 
ceive by  sense,  and  then  what  he  can  think.  He  seeks  an 
absolute  that  is  phenomenal.  Philosophy  is  embarrassed 
by  the  effort  to  conceive  true  being  that  has  negative 
elements  in  it ;  real  existence  that  is  physical  or  inert,  an 
absolute  that  can  be  conceived.  It  embarrasses  itself 
with  needless  contradictions.  How,  then,  can  it  be  libe- 
rated ?  Only  in  one  way  ;  only  by  science.  Man  has  to 
learn  to  distinguish  the  elements  introduced  by  his  own 
state  of  being  into  that  which  he  perceives  ;  for  he  natu- 
rally attempts,  at  first,  to  frame  his  belief  on  the  supposi- 
tion that  that  which  he  feels  to  be  corresponds,  in  all 
respects,  with  that  which  exists.  Hence  his  failure  ; 
hence  the  power  of  science  to  remedy  that  failure.  For 
when  the  importance  of  philosophy  stands  confessed,  the 
direction  of  men's  energies  is  altered.  They  no  more  seek, 
so  earnestly  or  so  exclusively,  to  know  that  which  is  ;  they 
give  themselves  to  the  investigation  of  that  which  appears, 
to  the  study  of  that  which  is  to  them,  to  the  tracing  of  rela- 
tions, to  the  establishment  of  laws.  They  say  :  We  can 
never  know  the  very  fact  of  things,  we  were  mistaken 
even  to  try.  Meanwhile,  with  these  very  words  upon 
their  lips,  they  remove,  under  a  guidance  unrecognized, 
the  error  which  made  that  attempt  a  failure.  They  make 
manifest  that  the  phenomenon  does  not  correspond  to  the 


108 


OF  POSITIVISM. 


[B.  II. 


fact ;  they  give  demonstration  in  what  respects  it  neces- 
sarily differs,  revealing  so  what  the  element  in  our  own 
condition  must  be,  which  is  affecting  our  perception,  and 
to  which  we  must  have  regard  in  all  our  thoughts  respect- 
ing that  which  is. 

Positivism,  therefore,  is  partly  true,  partly  mistaken  ; 
true  in  its  basis,  mistaken  in  its  practical  conclusion  ;  for 
it  fails  to  recognise  an  essential  element  in  the  case,  over- 
looking the  power  that  is  in  science  to  make  us  know 
more  of  man.  It  is  inconsistent  also,  inasmuch  as  it  takes 
no  account  of  the  significance  of  its  own  fundamental 
position.  For  while  it  asserts  that  all  which  we  feel  to  be, 
all  with  which  we  seem  to  have  to  do,  is  phenomenon  only, 
and  not  truly  that  which  is  ;  while  it  lays  stress  on  the 
fact  that  this,  which  truly  is  not,  is  real  to  us,  and  affects  us 
as  if  it  were  the  only  reality  ;  it  omits  to  note  the  re- 
markable fact  which  it  thereby  proves  respecting  our- 
gelves.  It  makes  no  account  of  the  fact,  that  that  which 
only  appears,  and  is  not  truly  real,  is  reality  to  us  ;  is  not 
felt  by  us  as  it  is.  It  passes  by  the  fact  that  we  feel 
wrongly,  which  yet  it  puts  forth  as  its  especial  discovery. 
It  forgets,  that  if  that  which  is  not  real  is  the  reality  of 
our  being,  then  we  are  under  illusion  in  respect  to  our 
feeling  and  our  life,  and  that  we  may  and  do  know  our- 
selves to  be  so.  This  great  and  striking  certainty,  amid 
all  the  uncertainty  which  it  points  out,  it  overlooks.  We 
thank  it  for  its  revelation  of  a  strange,  and  strangely  neg- 
lected, truth  respecting  ourselves,  which  we  will  pursue 
to  its  true  bearings,  and  turn  to  its  right  account.  For 
positivism  affirms  that  man's  existence  is  only  relative. 
But  surely  this  is  to  deny  that  he  has  absolute  existence  : 
and  what  is  this  but  to  say  that  he  has  not  true,  actual 
life ;  to  affirm  him  wanting,  dead  ? 

Positivism  does  not  deny  that  there  is  true  existence  ; 


c.  v.] 


OF   POSITIVISM. 


159 


that  were  impossible  to  one  who  allows  that  anything 
appears,  or  that  there  are  phenomena.  And  it  admits 
further,  or  asserts,  indeed,  that  this  true  existence  is  not 
identical  with  the  world  of  phenomena,  of  which,  by  sense 
and  intellect,  we  know  the  relations  and  the  laws.  Most 
unjustly,  therefore,  were  positivism  charged  with  atheism  ; 
and  it  is  in  the  farthest  degree  removed  from  materialism. 
But  it  evidently  errs  in  stating  that  our  concern  is  with 
phenomena  alone.  That  which  exists  must  be  that  which 
truly  acts  ;  must  be  the  only  cause.  That  which  only  ap- 
pears can  have  no  action.  Think  or  feel  as  we  may,  our 
true  concern  must  be  with  that  which  exists.  If  we  feel 
otherwise,  then  we  are  deceived,  but  the  case  is  not 
altered  ;  for  a  mere  appearance,  as  it  has  no  true  existence, 
can  have  no  true  action.  There  is  an  evident  misappre- 
hension in  the  statement  that  we  have  to  do  only  with 
phenomena  ;  for  if  that  with  whicli  we  concern  ourselves 
do  truly  act  on  us,  then  it  is  not  only  a  phenomenon  ;  if  it 
do  not,  but  only  seem  to  do  so,  then  it  is  not  that  with 
which  we  truly  have  to  do.  Accordingly  there  is  an  in- 
consistency in  the  language  of  positivism,  marking  this  in- 
consistency of  thought ;  for  these  phenomena,  of  which  it 
is  affirmed  that  they  are  not  that  which  truly  exists,  are,  at 
the  same  time,  spoken  of  as  facts,  or  as  realities.  The 
truth  is,  simply,  that  which  positivism  expresses  but  ig- 
nores ;  that  we  are  under  illusion,  and  feel  that  which  is 
not,  as  if  it  were.  Hence  all  the  mystery,  all  the  confu- 
sion. It  seems  to  us  that  we  have  to  do  only  with  things 
which  may  be  shown  to  be  mere  appearances,  and  not  true 
realities  ;  but  the  fact  is  not  and  cannot  be  so.  Under 
the  appearance  of  these  phenomena,  our  real  concern  lies 
with  the  truly  existing  fact.  We  are  wrong  in  thinking 
the  phenomena  to  be  that  fact.* 


♦  There  ia  a  curious  parallel  between  the  practical  teaching  of  positivism, 


160 


OF   POSITIVISM. 


[B.  II. 


If  we  may  apply  to  positivism  its  own  language,  we 
might  say  that  the  phenomenon  is,  that  we  have  to  do  only 
with  phenomena.  This  is  what  appears ;  such  it  is  to 
our  feeling  and  apprehension  ;  but  it  cannot  be  the  fact. 

And  again  :  when  the  positivist  argues  that  man  can 
know  only  phenomena,  and  cannot  know  the  true  and  real 
fact,  it  is  obvious,  in  reply,  that  if  his  argument  be  correct, 
it  is  impossible  for  him  to  know  what  he  affirms.  For  he 
can,  at  most,  know  that  man  appears  unable  to  know  the 
fact ;  he  can  but  know  that  this  is  the  phenomenon,  that 
so  it  is  to  his  apprehension.  He  cannot  know  that  the 
fact  is  so,  else  does  he  know  more  than  phenomena  with 
their  relations  and  laws.  For  man's  relation  to  the  fact 
of  being  is  evidently  not  one  of  the  *  relations  of  phenom- 
ena,' to  which  the  positivist  affirms  our  knowledge  to  be 
confined.  The  data  necessary  to  prove  that  man  can  only 
know  phenomena  can  never  be  forthcoming,  for  their  ex- 
istence would  overthrow  the  proposition. 

Positivism  evidently  makes  too  little  of  a  man.  Recog- 
nising that  defect  of  his  being  which  cuts  him  off  from 
true  reality,  it  bids  him  sink  to  the  level  of  that  state  ; 
from  which  all  his  strife,  and  error,  and  vain,  disappoint- 
ing labor  rather  should  confirm  his  hope  to  be  set  free. 
But  there  is  much  instruction  in  the  system.     Positivism 


and  the  theory  of  idealism.    The  idealist,  examining  that  which  we  per- 
ceive, and  finding  it  not  to  be  a  thing  which  can  exist  apart  from  a  mind 
affirms  that  that  which  exists,  exists  in  a  mind,  that  it  is  an  idea.     The 
positivist,  finding  that  the  things  which  we  feel  to  affect  us  are  phenomena 
not  true  realities,  affirms  that  our  concern  Is  with  phenomena,  and  not  with 
the  true  reahty.     But  both  are  inconsistent;  both  deny  their  own  affirma- 
tion  in  making  it;  both  are  misled  by  the  fact  of  our  perceiving  and  feelini? 
not  according  to  the  truth.    The  idealist  should  say:  These  things,  that 
can  only  exist  in  a  mind,  are  not  that  which  truly  is ;  they  only  seem  to  be 
The  positivist  should  say :  Our  concern  seems  to  be  with  phenomena  alone 
but  this  is  an  illusion :  the  truly  important  thing  is  other  than  these.  * 


0.  v.] 


OF  POSITIVISM. 


161 


proves,  at  least,  that  the  denial  of  matter,  the  denial  of 
the  reality  of  the  things  that  are  felt  as  real  by  us,  is  not 
unpractical,  does  not  lead  to  neglect,  or  the  withholding 
from  those  things  of  all  due  regard.  For  the  very  doc- 
trine which  most  emphatically  takes  this  ground  in  theory, 
in  practice  devotes  the  most  intense  regard  to  the  affairs 
of  life.  If  this  be  the  result  of  the  merely  sceptical  denial 
of  the  reality  of  that  with  which  the  senses  deal,  how 
much  deeper,  more  earnest,  more  worthy  must  be  his  heed 
to  his  daily  life,  who  recognises  in  ordinary  things,  not 
mere  material  existences,  nor  bare  phenomena  with  no 
deeper  meaning,  but  the  absolute  fact  of  being,  filled  with 
all  the  worth  of  the  eternal,  than  which  there  can  be  no 
other  and  no  higher,  and  which  are  obscured  and  darkened 
to  our  apprehension  only  by  the  want  of  a  respondent  life 
in  us. 

For  while  the  positive  theory,  in  rejecting  any  essential 
existence  in  phenomena,  gives  great  liberty  to  thought,  and 
overthrows  some  inveterate  and  baneful  errors,  its  benefits 
are  purchased  at  too  great  a  cost.  Its  gifts  are  treacher- 
ous :  uttering  words  of  honor  it  inflicts  on  science  a  deadly 
wound.  For  science  lives  by  the  pursuit  of  truth  and  of 
reality.  So  she  grew  to  her  vigorous  maturity  ;  so  must 
she  continue  to  grow,  or  she  must  languish  and  decay.  No 
languid  impulse  to  ascertain  relations  can  feed  with  throb- 
bing life  her  mighty  limbs.  The  warm  current  of  her 
blood  congeals  at  that  icy  touch.  The  balancing  of  profit 
with  no  hope  to  be  nearer  God,  is  a  sickness  at  her  heart. 
Enthusiasm  and  belief,  an  assurance  that  there  is  a  reality, 
a  being,  a  life  verily  responsive  to  our  appeals,  in  that 
with  which  we  have  to  do,  these  are  the  secret  of  her 
strength  ;  '  her  liver,  heart  and  lungs,  whereby  she  lives.' 
Like  Samson  shorn  of  his  locks,  and  delivered  helpless  to 
bis  foes,  were  science  robbed  of  these.    Mixed  with  errors, 


^^2  OF  POSITIVISM.  [B.  II. 

and  false  thoughts,  and  beliefs  unfounded,  and  mistaking 
of  phenomena  for  facts,  have  been  these  living  powers  ; 
but  they  are  living.  Like  all  life,  struggling  towards  ob- 
jects unforeseen,  in  failure  and  illusion,  tlie  longed-for  rest 
ever  forbidden  to  her  weary  feet,  each  solid-seeming  goal 
found  to  be  but  an  unsatisfying  semblance  when  it  is 
attained,  and  constituting  but  a  new  starting  point  in  the 
pursuit. 

Because  the  true  ends  are  not  man^s  but  God's.   Because 
in  all  that  seeming  failure  and  delusion,  God's  ends  are 
fulfilled.      The   true  life  dwells  with    him  triumphant, 
rounding  our  restlessness  with  everlasting  calm,  swallow- 
ing up  our  sorrows  in  the  eternal  joy.    There  is  no  failure. 
The  failure  is  phenomenon,  not  fact ;  that  which  we  feel 
because  we  feel  wrongly,  and  know  not  that  which  is. 
While  we  go  mourning,  the  heavens  clap  their  hands,  and 
earth  rejoices.     Nature  palpitates  through  every  nerve 
with  infinite  delight.    To  know  is  to  be  glad.    The  attain- 
ment of  our  ends,  our  success,  our  content,  were  life  no 
more,  but  death  ;   death  undestroyed,  the  victory  of  that 
which  is  not  Love,  whose  victory  were  absolute  defeat. 


% 


/ 


CHAPTER    VI. 

OF  mysticism:   and  the  use   op  the  rNTELLECT. 

The  real  is  God's  ideaL 

If  that  which  exists  be  not  such  as  we  can  conceive  in 
our  thoughts,  how  is  it  to  be  known  ?  or  at  least  how  can 
the  intellect  have  any  part  in  the  attainment  of  a  knowl- 
edge in  the  possession  of  which  it  cannot  participate  ? 

The  answer  to  this  question  is  simple.  The  intellect  is 
a  means  towards  acquiring  knowledge  in  the  same  way 
that  the  senses  are.  Not  a  ruler,  but  a  servant.  Our 
necessary  conceptions,  or  thoughts,  are  not  correspondent 
with  the  absolute  truth  of  things,  but  they  are  elements 
from  which  that  truth  may  be  gathered.  They  are 
materials  to  be  used.  Even  so  the  impressions  we  derive 
from  sense  do  not  correspond  to  the  relative  truth  of 
things,  or  to  the  right  conception  of  them  ;  yet  are  they 
the  means  by  which  wa  ascertain  that  relative  truth.  The 
intellect  contributes  to  a  knowledge  not  intellectual,  as 
the  sense  contributes  to  a  knowledge  not  sensuous.  We 
learn  from  our  senses,  by  examining,  and  ascertaining  the 
conditions  which  cause  them  to  be  affected  as  they  are. 
We  learn  from  our  intellect,  by  examination  likewise,  and 
by  ascertaining  what  the  circumstances  are  that  necessitate 
our  having  the  conceptions  we  are  obliged  to  form.  When 
the  distinction  is  borne  in  mind  between  that  which  it  is 

[163] 


164 


OF  MYSTICISM. 


[B.  II. 


C.  VI.] 


OF  MYSTICISM. 


165 


necessary  for  us  to  infer  and  that  which  is  true,  the  part 
which  the  intellectual  operations  bear  in  human  history  is 
evident.     Our  thoughts  and  conceptions  are  to  be  inter- 
preted by  a  knowledge  of  ourselves  and  of  our  relations. 
They  are  among  the  elements  from  which  we  learn  what 
the  truth  must  be.    It  is  not  truly  an  embarrassment  that 
our  necessary  conceptions  should  be  incorrect,  and  should 
vary ;  these  are  the  very  circumstances  which  give  cer- 
tainty and  completeness  to  our  knowledge.    It  is  because 
the  impressions  on  our  senses  do  not  correspond  with  the 
objects  of  sense,  and  vary  with  all  our  changing  relations 
to  those  objects,  that  sense  avails  for  us  as  a  means  of  guid- 
ance and  information.    Even  so,  it  is  the  inaccuracy  and 
variableness  of  our  intellectual  conceptions  that  give  them 
their  value,  enabling  us  truly  to  know.    If  any  one  ad- 
hered to  the  immediate  impressions  on  his  senses,  as  indi- 
cating the  true  relations  of  things,  he  would  necessarily  bo 
altogether  deceived ;  but  that  would  be  because  he  misused 
his  senses.    He  would  ascribe  to  them  a  false  authority. 
Even  so  are  we  deceived  when  we  regard  our  intellectual 
conceptions  as  conveying  to  us  the  truth  of  things.     We 
misuse  the  intellect.    We  ascribe  to  it  a  false  authority. 
Nothing  can  be  simpler,  than    that   intellect   is  to  be 
used  as  sense  is  used  :  one  question  is  ever  to  be  applied 
to  both :  Why  have  we  this  sensuous  impression  ;  why 
have  we  this  intellectual  impression  ?    Sense  and  intellect, 
alike,  have  to  do  with  the  true  reality  not  directly,  but 
indirectly  only,  dealing  themselves  with  appearances.' 

How  then  are  the  intellectual  impressions  to  be  cor. 
rected  ?  for  the  impressions  of  sense  are  corrected  by,  and 
made  subservient  to,  the  intellect.  To  what  is  the  intel- 
lect subservient  ?  To  the  moral  sense  :  to  tliat  perceptive, 
appreciative  power  in  man  which  is  not  intellectual! 
Sense  and  intellect  do  not  exhaust  the  faculties  of  man. 


i 


If  the  intellect  be  not  truly  a  knowing  faculty,  but  have 
to  do  only  with  phenomena,  it  does  not  follow  that  man 
cannot  know.  There  is  that  in  man  to  which  the  intellect 
is  servitor,  even  as  sense  is  servitor  to  it. 

But  further  :  the  senses  themselves  afford  a  means  of 
correcting  their  own  impressions,  even  where  those  impres- 
sions cannot  themselves  be  altered ;  we  learn  through 
sense  to  interpret  sensuous  impressions  which  do  not  cor- 
respond with  truth.  So  the  intellect  affords  a  means  of 
correcting  its  own  apprehensions,  even  in  cases  in  which 
those  apprehensions  cannot  themselves  be  altered.  We 
may  not  be  able  to  conceive  in  any  way  but  one,  but  we 
may  understand  that  such  conception  does  not  and  cannot 
correspond  with  the  truth,  and  why  it  cannot,  and  in  what 
way  the  truth  must  differ.  From  things  within  the  sphere 
of  our  sensuous  examination  we  learn,  in  part,  what  those 
things  must  be  which  are  beyond  its  scope  ;  so  from  the 
investigation  of  things  that  are  within  the  grasp  of  our 
intellect,  we  can  learn  in  part  what  that  must  be  which  is 
beyond  it. 

That  we  can  only  know  appearances  is  a  conclusion  we 
naturally  form,  when  first  we  find  that  our  intellectual 
impressions  do  not  correspond  with  the  fact.  But  this  is 
a  conclusion  too  hasty :  the  facts  warrant  no  such  infer- 
ence. Our  intellectual  apprehensions  do  not  truly  represent 
the  fact  that  exists,  therefore  they  must  be  interpreted, 
and  used  as  the  materials  for  obtaining  true  knowledge. 
True  knowledge  is  obtained  not  by  intellect  alone,  but  by 
the  exercise  of  all  man's  powers  on  data  and  means  of 
inquiry,  of  which  the  intellect  furnishes  its  share.  This  is 
the  legitimate  conclusion  :  to  be  tested  not  by  inferences 
or  arguments  beforehand,  but  by  trial  and  experience.  It 
is  true  that  by  the  intellect  we  know  only  appearances, 
and  not  the  true  reality.    This  is  no  special  disqualifica- 


166 


OF  MYSTICISM. 


[B.  II. 


C.  VL] 


OF  MYSTICISM. 


167 


tion  or  disability  of  man^s,  but  belongs  to  the  nature  of 
intellect  as  such.     It  is  not  a  faculty  that  deals  with  the 
essence  of  being.    To  know,  in  that  true  sense,  is  not  an 
intellectual  thing.*    Our  perplexity  has  arisen  from  mis- 
apprehension ;  from  the  expectation  of  finding  knowledge 
where  it  could  not  be  found.     The  discovery  that  by  intel- 
lect we  are  in  relation  with  phenomena  alone  is  none  the 
less  valuable  because  it  is  an  axiom,  and  involved  in  the 
nature  of  intellect  itself.    It  has  wrongly  been  made  a 
ground  of  discouragement  in  relation  to  our  capacity  to 
know.     There  is  more  in  man  than  intellect.    Our  natural 
supposition,  that  we  have  true  knowledge  in  our  intellect- 
ual impressions,  only  answers  to  the  supposition,  equally 
natural,  that  we  have  true  knowledge  in  our  sensuous  im- 
pressions.   Man  escapes  from  both  errors  in  the  same  way  ; 
turning  that  which  has  been  a  source  of  deception  into  the 
means  of  a  larger  wisdom.    It  is  man's  nature  to  be  de- 
ceived by  the  intellect,  even  as  it  is  his  nature  to  be 
deceived  by  sense.    It  is  his  nature,  also,  to  escape  from 
being  so  deceived,  and  to  make  the  false  impression  teach 
him  the  true  reality. 

When  any  particular  opinion,  or  inference,  is  necessary 
to  us,  the  fact  is  not,  as  we  are  apt  forgetfully  to  assume, 
that  what  we  are  obliged  to  think  is  true.  The  fact  is, 
only,  that  we  are  obliged  to  think  it ;  that  such  an  infer- 
ence is  necessary  to  us.    We  continually  apply  this  prin- 


♦  This  is  very  evident  when  it  is  considered  what  intellectnal  knowledge 
is.  Not  to  insist  on  the  idealist  argument  that  only  ideas  can  be  in  a  mind, 
is  it  not  evident  that  the  bedjo  of  anything  cannot  be  in  a  thought  or  con- 
ception? Is  it  not  evident  that  the  intellect  can  contain  only  that  which  is 
inert?  That  which  is  to  the  mental  consciousness  cannot  be  active;  that 
is,  it  can  only  be  a  phenomenon  or  appearance.  The  simplicity  of  this  makes 
it  seem  abstruse.  Is  it  not  self-evident  that  there  cannot  be  in  my  mind 
the  very  fact  and  Being  of  anything  else  ? 


..f 


ciple  in  ordinary  life :  why  should  it  not  be  extended  ? 
For  example,  men  have  necessarily  inferred  the  existence 
of  a  motion,  which  is  the  cause  of  sound  and  light ;  but  the 
fact  in  this  case  is,  that  it  has  been  necessary  to  men  to 
infer  these  motions,  not  that  they  exist.     The  right  ques- 
tion to  be  asked  respecting  light  and  sound  is,  why  it  has 
been  necessary,  from  our  experience  of  them,  to  infer  a 
motion.     All  philosophy  has  been  put  astray  through  fail- 
ure to  perceive  the  true  fact  in  cases  such  as  these ;  nor  has 
science  wholly  escaped  the  perversion.     And,  again,  from 
our  sensuous  experience  as  a  whole,  we  have  necessarily 
inferred  a  world  having  the  properties  we  call  material. 
The  question  that  truly  arises  here  is :  Why  has  it  been 
necessary  to  us  to  make  that  inference  ?    But  all  man's  in- 
quiries have  been  perverted  to  discussing  the  'material 
world ;'  how  it  exists,  or  can  exist,  how  it  came  into  being, 
what  its  essential  nature  is.    The  error  and  perversion  of 
thought  here  is  almost  too  simple  to  need  pointing  out. 
The  wrong  question  has  been  asked.     The  only  fact'is  our 
necessary  belief  or  inference.    Metaphysics  has  been  driven 
to  madness  in  seeking  for  the  essence  of  that  which  is  but 
phenomenon.     To  ask  the  right  question,  laying  hold  of 
the  only  fact  in  the  case,  the  necessity  of  our  inference  or 
belief,  sets  the  whole  tangle  straight. 

Why  it  has  been  necessary  for  us  to  infer  a  material 
world,  we  may  perfectly  understand  :*  but  why,  or  how,  a 
material  world  can  be,  we  should  necessarily  ask  in  vain 
for  ever.  It  cannot  be,  its  nature  is  contrary  to  being  ;  it 
is  phenomenal  only.     Just  so  with  respect  to  light  and 


o  Namely,  because  that  which  we  perceive  is  not  the  very  fact  but  an  ap- 
pearance; which,  therefore,  we  necessarily  find  not  to  act,  or  to  be  inert, 
inasmuch  as  it  is  only  an  appearance.  We  infer  therefore  an  unacting  ex- 
istence, which  is  the  definition  of  matter,  because  we  have  not  distinguished 
between  the  appearance  and  the  fact. 


168 


OF  MYSTICISM. 


[B.  II. 


sound.  It  is  not  difficult  to  understand  how  we,  from  our 
perception  of  them,  must  have  inferred  motion  as  their 
cause  ;  our  idea  of  space  and  matter  necessitates  it.  But 
how  motion  should  cause  us  to  perceive  light  or  sound  is 
truly,  and  must  remain  for  ever,  a  mystery  insoluble.  That 
is  the  phenomenon,  not  the  fact ;  a  necessary  inference  to 
us,  not  the  truth.  Most  unjustly  liave  we  depreciated  the 
human  intellect,  because  it  could  not  solve  questions  which 
were  misconceived,  and  recoiled  from  mysteries,  absolute 
and  never  to  be  solved,  because  of  our  own  creating. 

The  fact  of  nature  is  not  that  which  is  to  the  intellect, 
or  which  we  can  think,  and  have  been  compelled  to  think  ; 
but  not,  therefore,  has  the  intellect  no  part  to  play  in 
making  that  fact  known.  The  intellect  subserves  true 
knowledge,  not  as  itself  true,  or  giving  truth,  but  as  a 
means  ;  as  part  of  the  phenomena  from  which  the  fact  is  to 
be  elicited.  Our  thinking  and  conceiving  as  we  do  is  a 
part  of  that  consciousness  on  which  knowledge  is  founded. 
We  ought  to  have  conceived  respecting  the  world  as  we 
have  done  ;  to  have  found  those  inferences  necessary  which 
have  been  necessary.  From  these  very  conceptions  and  in- 
ferences we  may  gain  the  knowledge  that  we  need,  knowing 
them  to  be  erroneous.  Without  our  false  conception,  and 
necessity  of  inferring  that  which  is  not  true,  how  could  we 
know  the  truth,  of  which  these  very  errors  of  feeling  and 
conceiving  are  an  essential  part  ?  They  are  necessary  re- 
sults, or  constituents,  of  the  very  truth  which  we  require 
to  know.  They  show  us  ourselves.  Surely  we  can  learn 
truth  from  our  errors  ?  What  else  is  almost  all  our  expe- 
rience ?  The  truth  respecting  man  and  the  world  involves 
those  very  errors ;  they  are  the  means  by  which  that  trutli 
is  to  be  made  known.  For  to  know  the  truth,  even  intel- 
lectually, respecting  any  given  existence,  does  not  demand 
that  such  existence  should  be  conceivable  or  comprehen- 


c.  VI.] 


OF   MYSTICISM. 


169 


sible  by  thought.  To  know  the  truth  is  to  tliink  rightly 
respecting  it,  to  understand  its  relations.  This  knowledge 
the  intellect  can  attain  respecting  the  fact  of  being,  the 
right  mode  of  regarding  it,  a  knowledge  of  our  relation  to 
it,  a  recognition  of  that  which  pertains  to  ourselves  in  our 
perception,  a  consciousness  that  being  is  not  to  be  known 
by  thought,  but  by  living.  The  intellect  fulfils  itself  in 
taking  its  right  place. 

That  which  is  to  our  intellect,  though  not  itself  the  fact, 
is  the  basis  and  means  of  our  knowledge  of  the  fact.     As 
our  sensuous  experience,  or  perception  by  sense,  is  the 
ground  of  a  knowledge  not  seated  in  the  sense,  nor  corres- 
ponding with  the  sensuous  apprehension,  yet  in  which  the 
demands  of  sense  are  most  perfectly  fulfilled  ;  so  our  intel- 
lectual experience  is  the  ground  of  a  knowledge  not  seated 
in  the  intellect,  nor  corresponding  with  our  intellectual 
apprehensions,  but  absorbing,  using,  and  interpreting  them, 
showing  why  they  must  be  such  as  they  are.     That  which 
we  must  conceive  is  not,  therefore,  assumed  to  be  that  which 
IS,  but  we  understand  why  our  conception  must  be  such,  the 
demands  of  intellect  being  herein  most  perfectly  fulfilled. 
The  great  error  and  embarrassment  of  philosophy  has  been 
the  supposition  that  that  which  is  to  thought  is  that  which 
IS  ;  assuming  the  existence  of  the  phenomenon.     As  well 
might  we  attempt  to  construct  a  science  on  the  basis  of  the 
existence  of  that  which  i?  to  sense.    We  are  as  if  a  person 
should  endeavor  to  understand  the  world,  assuming  that 
the  forms  of  things  to  his  eye  are  their  true  forms.    We 
need  to  do  for  the  intellect  what  science  has  done  for  sense, 
put  it  to  its  USE.     We  should  no  more  think  of  the  world 
we  conceive  as  being  the  true  world  that  is,  than  we  think 
of  a  chair  as  having  but  three  legs  because  we  may  see  but 
three.     As  we  reflect  why  we  can  only  see  imperfectly,  so 
we  should  reflect  why  we  can  only  conceive  imperfectly. 
8 


170 


OF  MYSTICISM. 


[B.  II. 


From  that  which  alone  can  be  conceived  we  learn  to 
know  that  which  is,  by  a  knowledge  of  ourselves  and  our 
relations  ;  as  in  every  other  case  we  learn  the  truth  from 
the  appearance.  For,  knowing  our  own  state,  and  how  it 
affects  the  impressions  we  receive,  the  necessity  of  our  in- 
ference has  a  new  and  more  fruitful  meaning ;  it  no  more 
leads  us  to  suppose  that  the  fact  is  what  we  must  infer,  but 
guides  us  to  the  reason  which  makes  us  so  infer  ;  guides  us, 
therefore,  to  the  truth,  to  that  which,  operating  upon  us, 
should  affect  us  in  that  way.  It  is  not  that  our  thoughts 
or  perceptions  are  different,  but  that  we  interpret  them 
differently  ;  from  our  intellectual  processes  we  infer,  not 
the  absolute  truth  of  their  results,  but  of  what  kind  that 
fact  must  be,  which,  truly  existing,  is  the  true  cause  of  all. 

It  is  true  that  the  phenomenon  cannot  directly  teach  us 
the  fact,  but  it  can  teach  it  indirectly.  For  the  phenome- 
non can  teach  us  ourselves ;  it  has  an  emphatic  and  perfect 
adaptation  to  reveal  to  us  what  our  own  state  is.  Among 
the  relations  we  discern  in  it  our  own  relations  have  their 
place,  chief  and  most  needful  of  all.  And  when  our  own 
state  is  known,  the  phenomenon  ceases  to  be  unadapted  to 
make  us  know  the  truth.  It  is  perceived  to  be  that  which 
It  truly  is,  the  best  and  only  means  for  giving  us  that 
knowledge.  By  no  other  means  could  that  result  be  ob- 
tained ;  the  appearance  is  that  which  should  and  must 
appear.  It  is  the  sole  means  whereby  the  fact  could  be 
shown  to  us  as  it  is.  We,  being  as  we  are,  could  not 
know,  or  be  brought  into  relation  with,  the  spiritual  fact 
of  being,  in  any  other  way  than  this,  perceiving  it  as  ma- 
terial and  defective ;  nor  learn  what  it  is,  except  throucrh 
feeling  the  inert  phenomenon  as  our  reality. 

There  is,  in  truth,  no  reasonable  bound  to  the  possible 
knowledge  of  man,  when  that  knowledge  is  pursued  in  the 


C.  VI.] 


OF  MYSTICISM. 


171 


right  way,  and  its  nature  rightly  understood.  In  the  phe- 
nomenon, or  appearance  to  him  of  that  which  is,  and  in  his 
consciousness  or  knowledge  of  himself,  are  contained  ele- 
ments which  are  evidently  sufficient  for  a  knowledge  be- 
yond any  limits  we  can  conceive.  At  first  he  naturally 
mistakes,  because  he  assumes  the  phenomenon  to  be  the 
fact.  But  this  is  an  error  time  is  sure  to  correct :  he  finds 
that  what  he  had  supposed  to  be  the  fact  cannot  be  so. 
Then  he  gives  up  the  hope  of  knowing  the  fact  at  all ;  but 
this  despair  also  is  transient :  the  necessary  laws  of  the 
mental  life  reassert  tliemselves.  That  which  has  been 
human  experience  in  the  past  repeats  itself  in  the  present 
under  another  form  ;  and  man's  native  instinct  of  seeking 
that  which  is,  beneath  that  which  is  to  him,  crushed  for  a 
moment,  resumes  its  rightful  sway.  The  intellect  willingly 
abandons  its  usurped  authority,  and  puts  on  the  higher 
dignity  of  serving. 

Thus  thought  is  set  free,  and  called  into  new  activity. 
Having  authority  only  in  respect  to  the  mode  in  which  we 
are  affected,  only  in  respect  to  phenomena,  it  needs  no 
limits  or  restraints  to  be  imposed  upon  it.  A  variable 
element,  as  it  were,  is  introduced  into  our  regard,  on  which 
the  stress  of  all  intellectual  difficulties  is  thrown  and  lost. 
Our  necessary  conception  depends  upon  our  state,  which 
indeed  is  to  be  learnt  from  it ;  the  fact  is  wholly  untouched 
by  any  such  necessities  of  thinking.  We  no  longer  seek 
to  compel  our  thoughts,  to  make  them  correspond  with 
that  which  other  portions  of  our  nature  demand  ;  we  are 
no  longer  under  temptation  to  violate  the  laws  of  thinking. 
What  we  must  think  depends  upon  what  we  are  :  it  is  not 
absolutely  true ;  was  never  meant  to  be  so ;  cannot  be. 
Our  conception  is  not  itself  true  knowledge,  but  is  the  im- 
pression on  us  from  which  true  knowledge  is  to  be  derived. 
The  affections  are  not  coerced,  tliought  is  not  distorted ; 


172 


OF  MYSTICISM. 


[B.  II. 


they  are  harmonized  by  a  new  element.  The  fact  and  our 
conception  ought  to  differ  ;  their  difference  is  the  condition 
of  our  knowledge,  not  a  hindrance  to  it ;  it  teaches  us  to 
know  ourselves.  Just  as  much  should  it  be  so  as  the  shape 
of  an  object  to  our  eye  ought  to  differ  from  its  true  shape.* 
Just  as  necessary  to  our  true  knowledge  is  the  inaccuracy 
of  the  intellectual  apprehension,  as  of  the  sensuous  one. 
Just  as  truly  is  it  in  fact  correct,  such  as  it  ought  to  be. 
To  our  conception  the  eternal  ought  to  be  temporal,  the 
spiritual  ought  to  be  material.  So  it  is  known  to  be 
eternal  and  spiritual ;  even  as  the  stars  ought  to  be  seen 
by  us  as  feeble  lights,  and  are  known  thereby  to  be  rightly 
conceived  as  a  boundless  galaxy  of  worlds. 

The  advantage  of  this  position  is,  that  everything  is 
made  a  matter  of  rational  evidence.  The  entire  question 
respecting  the  world  is  brought  under  the  ordinary  rules 
of  judging,  submitted  to  examination,  opened  to  any  and 
every  test.  Nothing  is  taken  for  granted,  no  step  in  the 
process  set  aside  as  not  to  be  subjected  to  rigorous  proof. 
No  appeal  is  made  to  feelings  as  giving  demonstration,  nor 
anything  claimed  to  be  true,  merely  because  of  our  intense 
conviction.     There  is  no  Mysticism  in  it. 

For  mysticism  is  the  assertion  of  a  means  of  knowing 
that  must  not  be  tried  by  ordinary  rules  of  evidence ;  the 
claiming  authority  for  our  own  impressions.  Against  the 
tendency  of  men  to  deny  all  that  is  not  perceivable  by 
sense,  the  mystic  affirms  another  and  higher  faculty,  which 
has  authority  in  its  sphere,  as  sense  has  in  a  lower  one. 
Against  one  impression  not  to  be  questioned,  he  puts 


•  If  the  visible  size  of  objects  did  not  vary  with  our  distance,  into  what 
perplexity  our  movements  would  be  thrown. 


C.  VI.] 


OF  MYSTICISM. 


173 


another  ;  doubtless  without  power  to  maintain  it,  without 
valid  basis,  but  not  without  ample  excuse.     The  assertion 
of  the  true  existence  of  phenomena,  or  of  the  inherent  and 
ultimate  authority  of  sense  and  intellect,  not  only  gives  an 
example,  but  institutes  even  a  necessity  for  the  comple- 
mentary assertion  of  the  mystic.    The  essence  of  mysticism, 
and  its  source,  alike,  are  found  in  the  doctrine  that  we 
should  believe,  on  the  evidence  of  consciousness,  in  the 
existence  of  an  external  world  such  as  we  feel  to  be.   Open 
that  door,  and  no  form  of  mysticism  can  be  shut  out ;  all 
mysticism  is  in  its  roots  embraced  in  the  doctrine  of  the 
power  of  consciousness  to  vouch  for  any  existence  but  its 
own,  and  that  of  some  cause,  the  nature  of  which  must  be 
discovered  by  investigation.     No  mysticism  is  so  mystical, 
none  so  fertile  of  confusion,  as  the  assertion  of  the  authority 
of  our  consciousness  to  establish  the  existence  of '  matter.^ 
That  is  the  parent  from  which  the  whole  brood  derives  its 
life.    No  mystic,  how  extravagant  soever,  does  anything 
more  than  assert  the  authority  of  his  consciousness  for 
something  that  he  cannot  otherwise  prove  ;  nor  asserts  on 
that  authority  a  position  more  absurd,  more  clearly  dis- 
provable.     All  the  weakness  and  mischief  of  mysticism, 
without  its  redeeming  features  or  excuse,  are  in  the  doc- 
trine that  there  must  be  matter  because  of  our  conscious- 
ness.   The  mystic  does  but  meet  the  asserter  of  matter 
with  his  own  weapons,  on  behalf  of  reason,  and  religion, 
and  humanity.    He  does  but  refuse  to  be  morally  stifled, 
when  the  very  arguments  of  his  assailant  are  equally  avail- 
able for  his  defence.     To  cling  to  the  existence  of  such  an 
inert  world  as  is  supposed  to  answer  to  our  consciousness, 
and  to  refuse  to  the  mystic  the  existence  of  anything  else 
that  answers  to  his  consciousness,  is  a  puerile  inconsistency. 
We  demand  of  him  that  he  shall  submit  his  consciousness 
to  the  test  of  reason  and  experience,  and  consider  how  far 


174 


OF  MYSTICISM. 


[B.  II. 


it  may  be  determined  by  his  own  condition,  but  refuse  to 
submit  ourselves  to  the  same  demand.*  The  assertion  of 
matter  as  existing,  as  anything  else  than  an  inference 
necessary  to  us  through  our  defect  of  knowledge,  is  the 
worst  of  all  mysticism  ;  mysticism  without  its  poetry,  its 
beauty,  its  elevation  of  sentiment,  its  charms  of  imagina- 
tion. It  is  to  be  mystical  on  the  wrong  side  ;  to  incur  all 
its  faults  and  penalties,  and  forego  its  compensations  ;  to 
defy  argument  and  reason,  and  the  legitimate  restraints 
upon  our  tendency  to  judge  of  things  by  ourselves,  not  as 
the  mystic  does  for  the  sake  of  freedom,  but  only  to  make 
ourselves  more  irremediably  enslaved. 

For  men,  not  understanding  that  the  true  world  is  dif- 
ferent from  that  which  it  appears,  and  feeling  themselves, 
therefore,  bound  to  maintain  the  existence  of  that  which 
appears,  are  driven  to  the  very  argument  of  mysticism  in 
order  to  do  so.  Finding  that  the  existence  of  that  which 
appears  can  be  disproved,  is  indeed  disproved  by  the 
soundest  exercise  of  our  faculties,  they  assert  consciousness 
as  an  evidence  for  its  existence,  not  to  be  questioned. 

♦  The  case  is  not  altered  by  the  assertion  that  matter  rests  upon  the  uni- 
versal consent  of  all  men,  or  that  the  individual  judgment  is  corrected  by 
mankind.  For  in  the  first  place  the  case  is  not  so ;  and  in  the  second,  if  it 
were,  it  would  not  affect  the  argument.  There  is  not  universal  consent  for 
matter.  It  has  been  denied  by  reflecting  men  from  the  earliest  times  of 
which  there  are  records,  and  widely  prevalent  philosophies  are  based  upon 
the  denial  of  it,  at  this  day.  But  still  more,  there  is  no  consent  at  all  in 
favor  of  '  matter,'  but  from  a  few  metaphysicians.  The  world  have  no  such 
conception,  can  hardly  be  made  to  understand  it,  and  when  they  do,  it  seems 
to  them  absurd  to  the  last  degree.  What  universal  consent  testifies  is,  that 
there  is  a  real  acting  world,  and  that  ft  is  not  such  as  philosophers  represent. 
But  even  universal  consent  would  avail  nothing  to  the  argument:  the 
mystic  aflBrms  that  all  men  have  the  faculty  he  claims  if  they  would  use  it, 
and  besides,  no  man  has,  at  last,  anything  but  his  individual  consciousness 
to  rest  upon.  What  avails  it,  for  stability,  to  enlarge  a  pyramid,  if  it  be 
inverted  7 


C.  VI.] 


OF  MYSTICISM. 


175 


Hence  this  argument  comes  to  be  ever  at  the  mystic's  beck. 
*  We  only  know  by  consciousness,  or  an  intuitive  conviction, 
the  existence  of  an  external  world  ;  that  can  be  disproved, 
and  yet  it  is  the  basis  of  everything.  Therefore  we  must 
admit  tlie  existence,  upon  the  same  evidence,  of  anything 
else  ;  it  is  of  no  avail  to  disprove  it.  We  believe  things 
tliat  can  be  disproved,  and  refer  their  existence  to  the 
mere  mysterious  ordination  of  God,  without  meeting  the 
demands  of  the  intellect  by  any  explanation  of  how  the  case 
can  be.'  This  argument  is  perpetually  used,  nor  can  it  be 
set  aside,  except  by  a  mode  of  reasoning  which  sets  aside 
equally  the  existence  of  the  world.  The  door  is  opened 
by  the  assertion  of  the  existence  of  matter  for  any  and 
every  superstition.  The  argument  by  which  all  superstition 
supports  itself  has  been  conceded.  For,  in  truth,  the  belief 
in  matter,  the  belief  that  the  world  that  we  feel  to  be  is 
the  true  world  that  is,  is  in  the  strictest  sense  a  super- 
fcitition.  It  is  the  superstition  rather  ;  the  idol,  or  show, 
which  we  worship,  in  which  we  believe.  AH  other  super- 
stitions cling  about  this,  and  suck  their  life  from  it.  Our 
ignorance,  our  actual  spiritual  death,  whereby  the  eternal 
is  not  to  us,  and  the  phenomena  or  forms  are  the  realities, 
this  is  the  source  of  all  the  superstitions  of  mankind  ;  even 
as  to  know  the  Eternal  is  their  remedy. 

Mysticism  is  the  result  and  necessary  complement  of  the 
assumption  that  the  world  is  such  as  it  appears.  The  un- 
conscious protest  of  humanity  against  the  violence  thus 
done  to  it.  It  is  an  effort  to  fill  up  the  vacancy  and  defect 
of  being  in  that  which  we  feel  to  be.  This  is  the  good 
side  of  it.  It  recognises  the  defect  in  man's  present  state 
of  being,  and  claims  for  him  higher  faculties  than  those 
that  link  him  to  the  phenomenal.  It  refuses  to  make  its 
belief  of  the  spiritual  a  mere  deduction  of  the  reasoning 
faculties  from  that  which  appears  to  sense  ;  proclaiming, 


176 


OF  MYSTICISM. 


[B.  n. 


more  or  less  decisively,  the  unreality  of  that  which  passes. 
But  it  is  vitiated  by  the  present  imperfection  of  our  ap- 
prehensions. It  does  not  embrace  the  true  relation  of  that 
which  appears  to  that  which  is.  It  sets  up  an  antagonism 
in  man's  nature,  not  perceiving  the  needful  union  of  all  his 
powers  in  the  work  of  learning  the  fact  from  the  phenom- 
enon. 

In  giving   up  our  assumptions,  and  approaching   the 
question  of  our  life  and  the  world  with  the  free  exercise 
of  all  our  powers,  recognising  deadness  in  man  instead  of 
defect  in  nature,  the  demands  of  the  mystical  impulse  are 
fulfilled,  and  its  errors  done  away.     The  disharmony  of 
our  thoughts  and  feelings,  from  which  it  springs,  no  more 
exists.    There  is  no  longer  a  chasm,  which  we  nmst  try, 
at  least,  to  conceal,  between  our  notions  of  the  world,  and 
that  which  our  life  as  men  makes  necessary  to  our  hearts. 
The  fact  to  which  the  intellect  testifies  suffices  for  us,  and 
needs  no  inventions  to  supplement  its  defect.     For  at  the 
root  of  mysticism  lies  the  feeling  of  the  defectiveness  and 
evilness  of  matter  ;   a  feeling  that  cannot  be  banished, 
strange  as  it  is.     We  conceive  God  as  creating  a  substance 
that  puts  limits  to  His  power,  checks  and  confines  even 
our  capacities,  lowers  and  degrades  the  spirit.    And  man's 
heart  and  reason,  alike,  revolt  at  the  supposition.    The 
wrongness  of  the  fundamental  thought  expresses  itself  in 
chimeras  and  vain  imaginations  innumerable.     The  radical 
perversion  in  the  conception  of  the  world  gives  birth,  of 
necessity,  to  unceasing  efforts  among  men  to  rid  them- 
selves of  its  intolerable  consequences.     Endless  fancies  and 
wild  frantic  theories,  succeed  one  another  vainly  to  that 
end  ;  and  must  succeed,  until  that  fundamental  fancv,  that 
the  world  is  such  as  it  seems  to  us— that  wildest 'of  all 
theories,  of  a  substratum  conformable  to  that  appearance 
—be  exchanged  for  a  recognition  of  that  which  makes  a 


c.  VI.] 


OF  MYSTICISM. 


177 


world  in  which  is  no  defect,  no  unreality,  appear  to  us, 
and  be  felt  by  us,  as  this  world  is  felt. 

For  how  can  that  world  be  real  which  might  be  an 
illusion,  which  \ve  have  in  truth  no  means  of  distinguish- 
ing from  an  illusion  ?  Surely  a  true  reality  could  not  be 
such  as  that ;  could  not  be  a  thing  which  an  illusion  could 
perfectly  and  undistinguishably  simulate.  What  a  mockery 
of  reality  were  that.  For  be  the  fact  what  it  may,  it  can- 
not be  denied  that  our  feelings  might  be  exactly  what 
they  are,  without  the  existence  of  any  such  world  as  we 
believe  in.  Let  any  man  recall  the  phenomena  of  dreams  ; 
let  him  even  think  how  he  can  know  that  he  is  not  dream- 
ing now.  Are  not  certain  and  undeniable  illusions  as  real 
to  us,  in  sleep,  as  any  part  of  the  experience  we  call  our 
life  ?  the  things  we  feel  and  see  in  dreams  as  real  to  us,  as 
potent  over  our  feelings,  as  veritable  sources  of  joy  or 
pain,  as  anything  we  dignify  with  the  name  of  reality,  and 
think  it  madness  to  deny?  Truly  we  feel  these  things 
that  are  around  us  ;  they  are  real  to  us,  there  is  no  trifling 
with  them  :  but  even  so  are  dreams  ;  we  cannot  disregard 
their  power,  or  treat  them  with  unconcern. 

« 

For  in  that  sleep  of  death  what  dreams  may  come 
Must  give  us  pause. 


Dreams  may  thrill  with  acutest  anguish,  rouse  to  mad- 
dening terror,  overthrow  the  reason  ;  making  trivial  all 
things  besides.  A  dream  may  be  to  us  more,  and  more 
real,  than  all  our  waking  life.  How  can  that  be  a  true 
reality  which  an  illusion  can  outweigh?  What  do  we 
need  but  to  awake  out  of  sleep,  to  be  roused  from  our 
delirium,  to  know  in  verv  truth  that  we  have  mocked  our- 
selves  with  visions,  have  only  seemed  to  be  moved  by 
things  that  had  no  being  ;  the  true  cause  of  all  that  we 
8* 


178 


OF  MYSTICISM. 


[B.  II. 


have  felt  being  quite  other  than  that  which  we  have 
thought  ? 

Bj  signs  and  proofs  unnumbered  God  warns  us  of  our 
error  ;  calls  us  to  reflect  and  see,  and  be  no  more  deceived. 
By  our  instinctive  feelings,  which  cry  out  for  a  truer,  more 
real  world  than  this,  by  sickness  and  dissatisfaction  of 
heart  which  prove  its  vanity,  by  the  result  of  reasoning 
which  demonstrates  our  misconception,  by  doubts,  and 
denials,  and  failures,  and  impossibility  of  attaining  peace 
or  certainty.  He  bids  us  think  again.  All  evidence,  all 
demonstration,  that  can  be  given  He  heaps  up  against  us, 
to  show  us  we  are  wrong,  and  must  think  otherwise  of  Him, 
and  of  His  universe,  and  of  ourselves.  Plainly  He  says 
to  us,  in  language  of  unmistakable  experience,  •  Awake, 
thou  that  sleepest.' 


CHAPTER    VII. 


OF  NEGATION. 


Wherefore  do  ye  labor  for  that  which  is  not  bread  ? 

Love  is  not-Iove 
When  it  is  mingled  with  respects  that  stand 
Aloof  from  th'  entire  point.  King  Lear. 

The  universe  is  more  than  it  is  to  man,  and  to  think 
rightly  of  it  man  must  remember  this  and  consider  his 
defective  being.  The  simplicity  of  the  conception  consti- 
tutes its  sole  difficulty.  The  change  in  our  thought  is,  in 
truth,  so  slight,  so  amply  prepared  for,  so  little  requiring 
subtlety  of  apprehension,  that  it  is  difficult  not  to  think  it 
greater  than  it  is.  Not  a  disc  in  the  heavens  and  a  moon 
besides,  but  the  moon  perceived  as  a  disc  ;  not  a  physical 
world  and  another  spiritual,  but  the  spiritual  perceived  as 
physical :  too  little  to  us,  its  life  and  being  wanting,  there- 
fore inert,  therefore  transient  and  unreal.  Not  because 
there  is  that  which  is  inert  and  transient,  but  because  that 
which  IS  is  not  felt  by  us  as  it  truly  is.  Simply  we  do 
not  know  that  which  is,  the  true  essential  being ;  there- 
fore, when  that  which  seems  the  reality  to  us  is  treated  as 
the  true  reality,  inevitably  it  betrays  itself  as  a  delusion 
and  a  snare.  Only  a  speculative  opinion  is  given  up  in 
affirming  nature  to  be  truly  spiritual.  It  is  not  denied 
that  it  is  felt  as  physical  by  us.  This  is  the  proof  of  man's 
want  of  life.  Feeling,  acting,  working,  perceiving,  remain 
the  same  ;  only  our  belief  respecting  their  cause  is  changed, 


180 


OF  NEGATION. 


[B.  II. 


raised  from  less  to  more,  from  difficult  to  simple,  from  in- 
adequate to  worthy.     There  is  another  difficulty,  indeed, 
but  that  is  not  intellectual  ;  it  arises  from  the  moral  bear- 
ings which  such  a  change 'in  our  thought  has  upon  our- 
selves.    Hence  so  prolonged  a  labor  has  been  necessary  to 
free  us  from  an  assumption  so  soon  and  so  easily  proved  to 
be  untenable.   The  inseparable  connection  of  these  questions 
with  man's  conceptions  of  himself,  his  life,  his  relation  to 
God,  accounts  for  all  the  course  of  his  thoughts  in  respect 
to  them  ;  and  especially  for  the  hold  he  has  maintained  on 
the  accuracy  of  his  impressions,  and  the  existence  of  tliat 
which  he  feels  to  be.     Only  when  a  firmer  basis  is  given 
for  his  belief,  can  he  let  go  his  natural  conviction  ;  only 
when  a  true  reality  is  shown  for  his  rest  and  confidence, 
can  he  quit  his  grasp  of  the  false  and  treacherous  reality,' 
to  which  in  his  ignorance  he  clings,  with  trembling  resolu- 
tion to  believe,  and  fierce  wrath  against  all  who,  eitlier  in 
levity  or  in  seriousness,  point  out  to  him  how  vain  his  con- 
fidence is,  upon  what  a  quicksand  he  is  building. 

Just  so   protracted,  just  so  apparently  hopeless,  witli 
good  grounds  on  each  side,  should  the  strife  have  been. 
Looking  back  from  the  vantage  ground  which  the  recogni- 
tion of  man's  deadness  gives,  we  see  that  the  progress  to 
it  must  have  been  such  as  it  has  been.    The  defectiveness 
in  man,  which  creates  the  problem,  necessitates  all  the 
difficulty  which  has  attended  its  solution  ;  necessitates  our 
own  embarrassment,  and  doubt,  and  imperfect  satisfaction ; 
the  strife  between  reason  and  feeling  in  ourselves  ;  the 
inability  to  receive  the  assured  conviction  that  this,  which 
is  to  us  so  poor,  and  mean,  and  evil,  can  truly  be,  if  we 
could  feel  it  rightly,  so  good,  so  perfect,  so  glorious.    The 
forms  which  appear,  the  things  which  are  not  eternal,  and 
that  which  is  ti'ue  of  these  forms,  these  are  so  real  to  us, 
we  can  hardly  feel  that  they  are  not  the  true  realities,  that 


c.  vil] 


OF  NEGATION. 


181 


they  are  but  phenomena  ;  the  sole  fact  being  unutterably 
above  them,  utterly  unlike,  and  only  to  be  learnt  from 
them  by  most  careful  remembrance  how  unlike  that  which 
we  feel  must  be  from  that  which  is.  We  can  hardly  credit 
how  wrong  man  must  be,  to  feel  so  wrongly  ;  how  dead, 
to  find  the  universe  so  dead,  if  it  be  not  truly  so.  More 
easy  is  it  to  us  to  believe  that  the  evil  and  defect  are  not 
in  man  ;  it  does  less  violence  to  our  natural  persuasions 
to  attribute  them  to  nature,  even  though  they  fall  upon  her 
Author. 

Thus  the  sensuous  feeling,  and  the  foregone  conclusion 
of  the  mind,  struggle  against  evidence.  But  they  ought 
to  struggle.  The  doubt  adds  certainty  to  the  proof ;  the 
difficultv  testifies  aprainst  itself.  Man  does  feel  that  to  be 
which  cannot  be,  and  all  that  is  thereby  proved  of  him  is 
true.  It  is  only  needful  that  we  should  admit  the  evidence 
of  all  our  faculties  ;  unite  them,  and  not  deny  or  do  vio- 
lence to  any.  Consciousness  testifies  the  reality  of  physical 
things  to  our  feeling  (it  cannot  testify  to  more),  reason 
testifies  that  they  are  not  truly  real.  Putting  together  the 
evidence  of  both,  giving  them  both  their  full  weight,  the 
conclusion  is  evident :  that  which  is  not  truly  real  is  felt 
as  real  by  man.  Is  not  this  simply  a  want  of  being,  a 
want  of  life  on  the  part  of  man  ?  And  what  so  natural, 
what  difficulty  in  believing  it  ?  Why  should  we  repudiate 
the  testimony  of  either  faculty,  why  coerce  any  part  of 
our  nature,  when  their  united  testimony  agrees  so  well, 
and  issues  in  a  result  so  true  ? 

In  respect  to  existence,  we  have  had  such  a  perplexity 
as  a  child  might  find  in  dealing  with  the  minus  quantity 
in  mathematics.  We  have  been  embarrassed  in  dealing 
with  the  negative  elements  in  thought.  The  inaccuracy 
of  our  mode  of  thinking  is  strikingly  shown,  indeed,  in  the 
feeling  that  we  have  respecting  the  word  negaimi^  or  the 


lvS2 


OF  NEGATIOX. 


[B.  II. 


/ 


idea  of  negation,  when  it  is  definitely  put  before  us,  as  if 
It  were  something  strange,  far-fetched,  or  at  least  abstruse 
and  technical ;  while  in  fact  no  conception  is  more  familiar, 
or  more  constantly  in  our  mouths.    Almost  half  the  words 
in  every  language  express  negations,  and  negative  forms 
of  speech  are  of  constant  recurrence.    That  we,  dealin<r 
thus  abundantly  with  negations,  should  be  startled  as  if  i't 
were  some  fanciful  theorizing,  at  hearing  negation  spoken 
of  as  a  matter  to  be  considerately  regarded,  is  a  most  in- 
structive thing,  implying  some  great  inconsistencv  in  our 
thoughts.    And  there  is  an  inconsistency  not  less^evident 
than  harmful.   We  regard  negations  as  facts  or  existences, 
and  that  for  no  other  reason  than  that  they  affect  us  or 
seem  to  affect  us,  as  if  they  were  so.     We  are,  in  respect 
to  our  conception  of  existence,  and  our  attempts  to  solve 
the  problems  connected  with  it,  as  a  boy  would  be  in  re- 
spect to  an  equation,  who  took  all  the  minuses  for  pluses. 
For  this  reason  and  no  other,  we  say  the  problems  cannot 
be  solved.    If  we  will  not  recognise  the  negative  charac- 
ter of  some  0/  the  elements  with  which  we  have  to  deal, 
certainly  we  never  shall  solve  them.    Thought  exists  by 
virtue  of  negative  conceptions,  even  as  algebra  exists  by 
minus  quantities.    To  ignore  them  is  to  deprive  it  of  its 
power   as  a   means  of  discovery.     This  is  remarkably 
shown  in  that  field  of  physical  research  in  which  such 
triumphs  have  been  won.   Throughout  science  the  negative 
IS  recognised  as  of  equal  scope  and  importance  with  the 
positive.    Life  and  death,  light  and  darkness,  heat  and 
cold,  the  presence  and  the  absence  of  whatever  element  or 
power  may  be  in  question,  are  equallv  regarded.    The 
region  of  philosophy  has  differed,  hitherto,  from  tliat  of 
science,  in  the  want  of  a  regard  to  negative  elements. 
The  observer  of  physical  forces  pavs  constant  heed  to 
negation,  or  absence,  of  force;  the  inquirer  into  beincr  has 


C.  VII.] 


OF  NEGATION. 


183 


hitherto  had  little  regard  to  negation,  or  absence,  of  being. 
Hence  one  chief  cause  of  the  failure  of  philosophy.    It  is 
revivified  by  a  regard  to  negative  conceptions  ;  it  is  made 
triumphant  by  a  recognition  that  the  perceived  negation 
must  be  referred  to  man.    For,  in  truth,  some  speculators 
have  observed,  and  justly  insisted  upon,  the  presence  of 
negative  elements  in  that  which  is  perceived  :  but  this  can 
be  no  solution.     It  is  a  statement  of  the  problem,  not  an 
answer  to  it,  and  a  statement  naturally  felt  to  be  repul- 
sive.   The  recognition  of  negation  perceived  without  us 
can  be  nothing  but  a  preparation  for  knowledge  of  the 

defect  within. 

Evidently,  the  assertion  of  a  negation  in  respect  to  man 
is  but  the  transference  to  philosophical,  or  technical,  lan- 
guage of  the  statement  of  his  want  of  life.    The  two  ex- 
pressions differ  in  form ;  the  former  being  abstract  and 
indefinite,  the  latter  more  practical  and  explicit.     But  we 
cannot  fail  to  see  that  the  Scriptures  do,  in  the  plainest 
terms,  assert  a  negation  in  respect  to  man.     The  novelty 
of  this  form  of  words  should  not  blind  us  to  its  mej^ning. 
It  is  an  expression  proper  to  thought,  as  the  affirmation 
that  man  has  not  life  is  proper  to  religion.    Nor  should  its 
abstract  form  make  us  overlook  the  simplicity  of  the  prop- 
osition ;    or  prevent  our  seeing  that  it  is  but  another 
mode  of  saying  that  which  we  continually  say,  in  words 
more  familiar  but  not  at  all  more  simple.    We  say,  man  is 
imperfect,  of  inadequate  faculties,  in  a  low  inferior  state, 
clogged  and  limited  in  his  powers  by  his  physical  condi- 
tion, subject  more  or  less  to  a  strange  power  of  evil  within 
him.     All  these  things  are  indirect,  imperfect  modes  of 
saying,  according  to  the  language  of  philosophy,  that  there 
is  a  negation  or  defect  in  respect  to  man,  and  that  he  is 
such  as  he  is  by  virtue  of  that  defect. 

It  is  well  worth  while  to  familiarize  our  minds  with  the 


184 


QF  NEQATIOX. 


[B.  II. 


idea  of  negation^  and  to  see  what  it  truly  means,  since  we 
continually  have  recourse  to  it  in  our  thoughts.   Why  is  it 
necessary  to  our  conceptions  ?    This  question  is  not  hard  to 
answer.    The  idea  of  negation  is  necessary  to  the  intellect, 
for  the  very  reason  that  by  intellect  the  true  fact  of  being 
cannot  be  known.    The  necessity  of  the  conception  of 
negation  denotes  the  fact  that  our  conception  cannot  grasp 
that  which  truly  is.     Hence,  in  part,  the  natural  repug- 
nance to  the  idea,  and  the  ludicrous  aspect  which  it  pre- 
sents on  it  first  suggestion  as  a  distinct  subject  of  thought. 
That  we  must  recognise  negation  shows,  at  once,  that  our 
thought  deals  not  with  that  which  is,  but  with  that  which 
only  appears.    Negation  may  be  the  phenomenon,  may  be 
perceived,  may  exist  relatively  to  us,  but  it  cannot  truly 
BE.    Doubtless  it  is  for  this  reason,  that  the  recognition 
of  the  negative  elements  in  thought,  as  being  negative, 
has  been  so  tardy.      For  to  know  that  that  which  is  to 
our  thought,  which  alone  we  can  conceive,  is  not  truly  that 
which  is,  also  involves  the  recognition  of  that  death  of 
man,  which  it  has  been  so  hard  for  him  to  learn  :  involves 
that  he  feels  as  reality  that  which  is  not  real. 

That  the  intellect,  therefore,  in  attempting  to  conceive 
being,  is  compelled  also  to  admit  negation,  means  simply 
that  the  intellect  cannot  truly  conceive  bein^.  It  is  com- 
pelled to  deny  that  which  it  asserts.  To  the  intellect, 
being  must  appear  under  a  twofold  form,  of  being  and  ne- 
gation, for  true  being  is  more  than  intellect  can  grasp.  Or 
it  may  be  thus  expressed :  Thought  demands  oppositcs, 
can  exist  and  operate  only  by  contrasted  ideas  ;  therefore 
if  thought  deal  with  the  idea  of  being  it  must  also  enter- 
tain the  opposite  idea,  which  is  that  of  not-being,  or  nega- 
tion. Not  because  there  is  any  negation,  or  can  be,  but 
because  of  the  necessary  laws  of  thought,  as  demanding 
oppoaites.    So  far  the  reason  of  our  necessity  for  conceiv- 


C.  VII.] 


OF  NEGATION. 


185 


ing  negation  is  not  difficult  to  understand.  The  idea  ap- 
pears strange  or  foolish  to  us  only  because  we  have  not 
reasonably  considered  it :  have  not  reflected  on  our  own 
words  and  thoughts. 

Negation  is  necessarily  relative  :  it  cannot  exist.    The 
existence  of  negation  is  a  contradiction  ;  but  there  may  be 
negation  relatively  to  any  particular  thing,  or  mode  of 
being.    Negation  must  enter  as  an  element  into  all  relative 
knowledge.     It  pertains  therefore  to  thought,  the  scope  of 
which  lies  in  that  which  is  relative.     Negations  are  per- 
ceived ;  they  are  felt  by  us  as  existing,  and  as  producing 
effects.     This  is  easily  understood.     Negations  appear  to 
act  by  virtue  of  the  operation  of  that  of  which  they  are  the 
negation.     Cold  produces  effects,  and  seems  to  be  a  power 
in  nature,  not  because  it  is  anything,  but  because  it  is  the 
absence  (or  negation)  of  heat.     Darkness,  also,  produces 
effects  in  connexion  with  light.    In  themselves  darkness 
and  cold  are  nothing ;  but  as  the  absence  of  that  which 
operates,  they  also  appear  to  be  operative.     It  is  worth 
noting  how  large  a  part  of  human  activity  is  caused  by 
negations.     Absence  of  heat  and  absence  of  light,  what 
exertions,  what  widely  extended  operations,  to  remedy  or 
to  employ,  do  they  institute  among  men. 

To  say  there  is  negation  in  respect  to  man  involves  no 
difficulty  in  the  conception,  as  if  a  negation  existed,  or  any- 
thing were  absolutely  wanting.  It  implies  onlv,  that  in 
regard  to  man,  taking  the  true  being  of  humanity  as  tlie 
standard,  there  is  defect.  The  case  may  be  illustrated 
very  simply.  Nature  includes  many  imperfect  things,  such 
as  undeveloped  plants  and  animals.  The  perfection  of 
nature  is  thereby  in  no  way  impaired  ;  it  is  perfect  in  in- 
cluding those.  But  if  the  fully  developed,  or  perfect, 
animal  or  plant  be  taken  as  the  standard,  then  the  idea  of 
a  negation  is  introduced.    There  is  negation  in  respect  to 


186 


OF  NEGATION. 


[C.  II. 


C.  VII.] 


OF  NEGATION. 


187 


M 


it.  Or  again,  when  an  organic  body  dies,  no  defect  is 
thereby  introduced  into  nature  ;  other  life  perfectly  takes 
the  place  of  the  life  that  has  been  lost.  No  negation 
EXISTS,  but  there  is  a  negation  in  respect  to  the  body  that 
has  ceased  to  live.  Regarding  the  case  from  that  point  of 
view,  the  negation  is  perceived. 

The  Life  of  the  universe  is  perfect  and  unmarred  ;  there 
is  no  defect  in  it.  But  when  regard  is  had  to  man,  nega- 
tion is  perceived  :  his  life  is  defective.  To  think  aright 
of  him,  to  understand  his  condition,  regard  must  be  had  to 
a  state  of  being  which  is  not  fulfilled  in  him,  to  an  existence 
in  which  there  is  more.  This  should  not  be  hard  for  us  to 
conceive.  So  we  think  of  a  corpse  with  reference  to  a 
living  frame  ;  so  we  look  upon  the  immature  animal  with 
reference  to  maturity.  We  cannot  understand,  we  do  not 
attempt  to  understand,  the  structure  of  a  developing  organ- 
ism, without  a  constant  reference  to  its  perfect  state.  To 
conceive  rightly  of  man  as  he  now  is,  we  must  ever  keep 
our  eye  fixed  on  another  condition  of  his  being  ;  his  true 
being  as  man,  from  which  this  life  differs  by  defect,  and 
only  for  the  sake  of  which  this  life  is,  or  could  be.  Because 
man  must  live,  therefore,  and  therefore  only,  could  he  pass 
through  this  living  deatli. 

By  defect,  or  negation,  therefore,  man  is  physical,  and 
perceives  the  world  as  physical.  That  which  has  no  true 
existence  is  felt  as  the  reality  of  his  life,  and  compels  him 
to  infer  a  material  or  inert  substratum,  until  he  knows  why 
it  is  that  he  feels  that  to  be  which  is  not.  Availing  our- 
selves of  the  artificial  language  invented  for  other  subjects 
of  thought,  that  which  constitutes  physicalness  may  be  com- 
pared to  the  addition  of  a  minus  quantity,  that  is,  it  is  a 
loss.  Our  conception  of  the  physical,  as  something  added 
to  the  spiritual,  is  as  if  it  were  supposed  in  mathematics 
that  the  addition  of  a  minus  were  a  real  addition.    The 


simplicity  of  this  idea,  and  its  conformity  to  the  feelings 
wliich  we  truly  entertain  upon  the  subject,  is  shown  by  the 
thouglits  of  religious  men  respecting  the  death  of  the  body. 
They  feel  it  to  be  a  gain,  the  liberation  from  an  encum- 
brance, the  passing  to  a  state  of  more  perfect  being.    To 
be  freed  from  the  physical  is,  to  their  apprehension,  to  be 
freed  from  a  defect.     To  say  that  we  are  physical  by  loss 
and  want,  therefore,  is  but  to  interpret  the  language  of  the 
heart  into  that  of  the  intellect,  to  bring  our  mode  of  think- 
ing into  unison  with  our  truer  and  more  manful  mode  of 
feeling.     Nor  is  this  argument  less  applicable  to  those  who 
hold  that  there  is  no  consciousness  without  a  body,  and 
that  the  resurrection  is  the  commencement  of  the  future 
life.    For  not  less  do  they  hold  that  the  future  body  will 
differ  from  the  present  in  not  being  physical.     It  will  have 
been  freed  from  a  loss,  have  lost  a  defect.     'Not  that  we 
would  be  unclothed,'  says  St.  Paul, '  but  clothed  upon,  that 
mortality  might  be  swallowed   up  of  life.'     Thus   our 
thoughts  are  simplified  and  harmonized,  confusion  and  dif- 
ficulty are  removed.     Such  a  relief  is  given  us  as  would 
come  from  recognising,  for  the  first  time,  that  to  add  a  mi- 
nus was  to  subtract.     The  physical  comes  by  adding  a 
minus.* 

Thus  a  recognition  of  the  negative  character  of  that 
which  is  negative  in  our  perceptions,  simple  as  it  is,  effects 
an  enormous  gain  for  us,  places  us  in  an  entirely  new  at- 

♦  Mathematics  is  not  peculiar  in  dealing  thus  with  minus  quantities.  It 
is  the  type  and  exemplar  of  all  thought;  doing  consciously,  and  with  under- 
standing, what  is  done  unconsciously,  or  ought  to  be  done,  in  other  depart- 
ments of  intellect.  In  great  part,  its  superior  certainty  and  power  depend 
on  the  clear  recognition  of  the  part  played  by  the  negative  element.  Other 
branches  of  thought  have  in  this  respect  to  conform  themselves  to  its  laws. 
The  example  of  mathematics  proves,  at  least,  that  the  conception  and  use  of 
a  negative  idea,  as  a  means  of  interpreting  nature,  is  natural,  reasonable, 
and  conformable  to  experience,  and  ought  not  to  bo  embarrassino-. 


188 


OF  LEGATION. 


[B.  II. 


C.  VII.] 


OF  NEGATION. 


189 


I 


> 


titude  to  the  problem  of  existence,  and,  above  all,  enables 
us  to  embrace  and  unite  in  mutual  helpfulness,  discordant 
and  hostile  views.  It  disarms  scepticism  of  its  sting ; 
emancipates  devotion  from  its  bigotry.  It  leads  us  to  give 
up  self,  to  feel  that  we  ourselves  are  no  standard  ;  it  frees 
the  intellect  from  bondage,  the  heart  from  cruel  constraint. 
We  are  no  more  compelled  to  hold  that  to  be  real  which 
we  feel  as  real,  and  are  therein  set  infinitely  free.  We 
know  that  things  are  not  what  they  seem,  not  what  they 
are  to  us.  Man's  universe  gives  place  to  God's.  For  this 
that  we  feel  to  be  cannot  be  the  very  fact  of  existence, 
conceive  it,  or  conceive  as  added  to  it,  wliat  we  may.  It 
is  not  enough.  In  asserting  it  we  assert  negation.  This 
is  the  simple  substitute  for  all  speculations  respecting  mat- 
ter, and  properties,  and  essence  : — Man  wants  life ;  that 
which  is  to  his  feeling  and  his  thought  is  not  that  which  is. 

We  are  as  a  blind  man,  who  may  be  said  to  be  conscious 
of  a  negation  by  his  defect  of  sight ;  we  arc  conscious  of 
a  negation,  conscious  of  physicalness,  by  our  defect  of 
being.  And  as  no  knowledge  can  make  a  blind  man 
otherwise  than  conscious  of  a  negation,  nothing  but  the 
removal  of  his  defect,  though  he  understand  ever  so  well 
that  the  world  is  not  as  it  is  to  him ;  so  we  mav  under- 
stand  perfectly  why  we  are  conscious  of  negation,  and  that 
the  true  world  is  not  as  it  is  to  us,  while  our  consciousness 
remains  the  same.  Yet  it  is  of  the  greatest  moment  to  a 
blind  man  to  know  that  the  world  is  not  dark,  since  only 
so  can  he  be  brought  into  right  relations  with  his  fellow- 
men,  know  his  true  position,  or,  above  all,  embrace  tlie 
means  of  cure.  And  of  the  utmost  moment  is  it  to  us  to 
know  that  the  world  is  not  physical.  Only  so  can  we 
assert  our  right  position,  or  recognise  our  true  relations. 

And,  further :  a  man,  born  blind,  does  not  consciously 
feel  that  there  is  any  negation  in  his  perception.     He  is 


I 


not  naturally  aware  of  any  defect  on  his  part.  Even  so, 
we  do  not  feel  that  in  our  perception  of  the  world  there  is 
any  negation  ;  we  do  not  naturally  recognise  in  ourselves 
any  defect.  To  us  it  seems  that  the  physical  is  emphati- 
cally the  real.  But  we  learn  the  defect  in  our  perception, 
as  the  blind  man  does,  by  the  evils,  the  mistakes,  the 
failures,  to  which  it  subjects  us  ;  by  the  disproportion  we 
find  between  our  instincts,  our  desires,  our  native  endow- 
ments, and  the  results  we  can  attain.  We  do  not  perceive 
aright,  we  come  to  mischiefs  and  injuries  unforeseen  ;  fear 
takes  possession  of  us,  in  the  midst  of  day  we  grope  as  in 
the  night.  We  cannot  act  aright,  nor  adapt  ourselves 
truly  to  the  world  in  which  we  are  ;  for  we  do  not  know 
it  rightly,  it  is  more  than  it  is  to  us. 


BOOK    III. 


OF  RELIGIOK 

Tirex  I  saw  that  God  hath  a  larper  mouth  to  speak  with  than  I  had  a  heart  to  con- 
ceive with. — John  Bx^ntan  :  Grace  Abounding. 


[191] 


^ 


The  order  of  subjects  necessitates,  here,  a  word  of  explanation.  The 
views  advocated  in  the  following  chapters  are  not  an  offshoot  of|  nor  a 
deduction  from,  the  theoretical  conceptions  which  have  preceded.  They 
have  been  drawn  immediately  from  the  study  of  Scripture,  and  from 
them  the  philosophical  ideas  have  largely  derived  their  origin.  The  arrange- 
ment which  puts  the  philosophical  views  before  the  scriptural  has  been 
adopted  for  the  purposes  of  the  book,  but  that  order  does  not  represent 
either  their  historical  or  theoretical  dependence. 


[192] 


CHAPTER   I. 


OF  DEATH. 


Nor  is  it  at  all  Incredible  that  a  book  which  has  been  so  long  in  the  possession  of  man- 
kind should  contain  many  truths  as  yet  undiscovered.  For  all  the  same  phenomena,  and 
the  same  faculty  of  observation,  from  which  such  great  discoveries  in  natural  knowledge 
have  been  made  in  the  present  and  tlie  last  age,  were  equally  in  possession  of  mankind 
several  thousand  years  before. — ^Boruai :  Analogy  qfRdigion. 


Man  is  in  no  other  sense  prejudiced  than  as  he  clings  to 
that  which  he  cannot  feci  himself  justified  in  resigning. 
He  is  not  unwilling  to  advance,  but  he  is  fearful.  His 
very  timidity,  and  consciousness  of  his  liability  to  err, 
drive  him  to  assume  positions  which  only  the  most  perfect 
self-confidence  could  justify  ;  for  there  is  no  rashness  like 
that  of  fear.  We  are  so  bound  to  that  to  which  we  have 
been  accustomed,  because  to  us  the  unknown  is  full  of 
vague  terrors.  To  exchange  that  which  has  been  felt  as 
certainty,  for  that  which  seems  uncertain,  because  untried, 
is  painful  to  us.  We  fear  disaster  wherever  we  cannot 
see.  The  instinct  which  makes  the  stoutest  heart  shrink 
from  darkness,  and  peoples  it  with  phantoms,  is  equally 
strong  in  the  intellectual  world.  On  the  accustomed  prin- 
ciples certain  results  can  be  secured,  and  we  wish  to  rest. 
We  are  content  not  to  be  wiser  if  we  can  but  feel  sure. 
But  God  will  not  let  us  rest.  He  has  other  work  for  us 
to  do.  Above  all  He  will  cure  us  of  our  mistrust.  For 
the  secret  of  this  misgiving  is,  that  man  has  no  faith  in 
God.  The  evil  of  his  nature  shows  itself  in  fear.  He  that 
9  [193] 


194 


OF  DEATH. 


Lb.  III. 


is  conscious  of  wrong  must  be  afraid.  Adam,  when  his 
conscience  had  awakened,  hid  himself  at  the  voice  of  God  ; 
so  do  his  children  hide  themselves  at  the  voice  of  truth. 
It  was  a  just  fear  in  Eden,  it  is  a  just  fear  now ;  but  it 
issues  now,  as  then,  in  a  foolish  deed.  At  the  feet  of  God 
the  shrinking  conscience  must  regain  her  peace  ;  the  timid 
intellect  renew  her  daring,  bowing  herself  to  truth.  We 
do  right  to  fear,  we  do  right  to  come  to  that  of  which  we 
are  afraid,  that  the  cause  of  fear  may  be  taken  away. 

Men  adapt  their  moral  and  religious  convictions  to  their 
intellectual  conceptions.    That  which  the  conscience  and 
the  aflFections  demand  will  always  secure  for  itself  a  place 
in  the  human  belief,  but  these  moral  elements  entwine 
themselves  with  others  purely  intellectual,  and  the  whole 
are  built  together  into  a  connected  and  more  or  less  com- 
pleted system.    Thus  it  comes  to  pass  that  the  intellectual 
convictions,  being  held  authoritative,  become  the  basis,  as 
it  were,  of  the  moral  and  religious  beliefs,  and  determine 
their  form  and  expression.     When,  therefore,  our  intel- 
lectual opinions  are  in  any  considerable  degree  affected  by 
the  results  of  inquiry,  it  necessarily  happens  that  our  moral 
beliefs  appear  also  to  be  implicated,  and  much  embarrass- 
ment is  caused  in  this  way.     It  is  hard  to  remember  the 
essential  independence  of  two  things  which  have  been  thus 
closely  united  ;  and  all  the  power  of  the  moral  nature  is 
often  enlisted  on  behalf  of  merely  intellectual  opinions, 
which  are  in  themselves  most  antagonistic  to  religious 
principles,  but  to  which  those  principles  have  been,  more 
or  less  laboriously,  reconciled.     Often,  also,  the  more  op- 
posed to  the  spirit  of  religion  a  particular  opinion  is,  the 
more  intimately  it  appears  to  be  involved  with  our  religious 
convictions  ;  for  the  very  reason  that  a  larger  amount  of 
toil  and  thought  has  been  bestowed  upon  the  task  of  bring- 
ing them  into  even  an  appearance  of  agreement. 


c.  I.] 


OF  DEATH. 


195 


The  writers  of  the  New  Testament  declare  men  to  be 
dead.  They  speak  of  men  as  not  having  life,  and  tell  of  a 
life  to  be  given  them.  If,  therefore,  our  thoughts  were 
truly  conformed  to  the  New  Testament,  how  could  it  seem 
a  strange  thing  to  us  that  this  state  of  man  should  be  found 
a  state  of  death  ;  how  should  its  very  words,  reaffirmed  by 
science,  excite  our  surprise  ?  Would  it  not  have  appeared 
to  us  a  natural  result  of  the  study  of  nature  to  prove  man 
dead  ?  Might  we  not,  if  we  had  truly  accepted  the  words 
of  Scripture,  have  anticipated  that  it  should  be  so  ?  for  if 
man  be  rightly  called  dead,  should  not  that  condition  have 
affected  his  experience,  and  ought  not  a  discovery  of  that 
fact  to  be  the  issue  of  his  labors  to  ascertain  his  true  rela- 
tions to  the  universe  ?  Why  does  it  seem  a  thing  incredible 
to  us  that  man  should  be  really,  actually  dead  ;  dead  in 
such  a  sense  as  truly  to  affect  his  being,  and  to  determine 
his  whole  state  ?  Why  have  we  been  using  words  which 
affirm  him  dead  in  our  religious  speech,  and  feel  startled  at 
finding  them  proved  true  in  another  sphere  of  inquiry  ? 

Do  we  say  that  man  is  '  spiritually '  dead  ?  That  is  the 
very  thing  affirmed  by  science.  Spiritual  death  is  actual 
death  ;  death  in  respect  to  true  life  and  being  :  the  death 
which  constitutes  tlie  world  a  dead  world  to  us.  Man  is 
dead  to  the  spiritual,  dead  to  the  eternal,  dead  to  that 
which  IS  ;  so  that  mere  passing  forms  are  the  realities  to 
him.  Science  reveals  to  us  a  result  of  man's  being  spiritu- 
ally dead  ;  shows  that  death  to  be  a  profounder,  more  real 
thing,  more  truly  worthy  the  name  of  death,  than  we  had 
thought  it.  That  death  causes  our  life  to  be  not  truly  life : 
a  life  to  that  which  is  not. 

When  we  see  that  there  is  a  deadness  in  man,  scales  fall 
from  our  eyes  in  reading  the  Bible ;  our  thoughts  are  in 
harmony  with  it.  For  one  chief  part  of  the  wonder  of  that 
book  lies  in  this  :    that  whereas  we  have  taken  it  for 


19G 


OF   DEATH. 


[B.  III. 


C.  I J 


OF   DEATH. 


197 


granted  that  man  lias  his  life,  the  men  who  wrote  those 
pages  knew  that  he  was  dead.  They  are  saying  what 
every  man  in  his  soul  affirms  to  be  true.  Those  words  are 
the  fulfilment  of  that  which  all  men  long  for,  which  all  men 
recognise.  But  they  are  truer  than  our  thoughts :  if  we 
would  do  them  justice,  we  must  take  them  as  they  are,  not 
bending  them  to  our  conceptions.  The  affirmation  of  the 
New  Testament  is  that  men  are  dead,  and  that  they  are  to 
be  made  alive  through  Christ.  But  we  have  been  com- 
pelled to  make  the  Bible  affirm  man's  life,  and  have,  there- 
fore, given  to  its  words  whatever  meaning  we  could  best, 
and  most  reverently,  put  upon  them  consistently  therewith. 
For  by  reverent  and  loving  hands  has  this  violence  been 
done.  Not  through  fault,  but  unavoidably.  How  could 
it  have  been  otherwise  ?  While  science  seemed  to  be 
demonstrating  deadness  throughout  all  nature,  how  could 
man's  deadness  be  maintained  ?  Was  there  to  be  no  life 
in  the  universe  at  all  ?  For  to  our  ignorance  the  uniform- 
ity of  nature  seems  a  dead  necessity,  and  we  cleave  there- 
fore to  the  life  and  spirituality  of  man  as  the  only  basis  on 
which  a  religious  faith  can  rest.  We  are  compelled  to 
deny  that  man  can  be  inert,  compelled  to  assert  for  him 
freedom,  compelled  to  take  his  state  as  the  type  and 
evidence  of  spiritual  being.  There  has  been  no  choice 
before  us.  We  have  been  compelled  to  interpret  the 
words  of  the  New  Testament  conformably,  for  we  could 
see  otherwise  no  possibility  of  religion  at  all. 

But  can  words  more  plainly  affirm  that  man  is  not  spir- 
itual, that  he  has  not  life  ?  Must  we  not  have  been  laid 
under  constraint,  subjected  to  a  perverting  force,  in  inter. 
preting  the  Scriptures  ?  Does  not  the  recognition  of  deatli 
as  the  state  of  man,  come  from  what  source  it  ma  v. 
set  free  the  Bible  from  conceptions  alien  to  its  spirit? 
May  we  not  ask  ourselves,  whether  our  religion,  though 


i 


based  honestly  and  most  earnestly  upon  the  words  of 
Scripture,  have  not  involved,  in  spite  of  ourselves,  a 
bending  of  those  words  to  suit  our  imperfect  knowl- 
edge? 

Nothing  can  be  more  striking  than  the  simple  way  in 
which  the  deadness  of  man  is  laid  down  in  the  New  Tes- 
tament. It  seems  almost  to  be  assumed,  as  if  it  were  a 
thing  known  and  evident,  not  needing  to  be  proved  or 
made  matter  of  special  demonstration.  As  is  the  exist- 
ence of  God  to  the  Old  Testament,  so  is  the  deadness  of 
man  to  the  New  ;  the  fact  central  to  the  whole,  the  postu- 
late, as  it  were,  on  which  the  entire  volume  rests.  May 
not  a  reason  be,  that  the  death  of  man  is  a  central  fact  of 
the  Old  Testament  also  ;  that  man  died  in  Adam  ?  because 
such  as  he  is  through  that  transgression  ?  Therefore,  when 
the  New  Testament  writers  take  up  the  history  and  tell 
of  life  bestowed,  of  a  true  spiritual  life  bestowed  on  man, 
of  necessity  they  speak  as  they  do.  It  is  not  theirs  to 
prove  the  death,  that  is  the  known,  the  evident  fact,  only 
theirs  to  reveal  the  deliverance  from  death.  The  burden 
of  the  New  Testament  is  that  man  is  to  be  made  alive  ;  he 
is  to  be  saved  from  death. 

If  this  be  the  Gospel,  what  a  glory  follows  1  What  light 
and  joy  break  in  upon  this  dark  and  miserable  world ! 
We  may  almost  begin  to  see  it  as  God  sees  it,  and  under- 
stand that  our  ignorance  alone  has  clothed  it  in  such  ap- 
palling gloom.  If  this  were  man's  life,  truly  it  were  a 
dark,  a  fearful,  a  mysterious  world  ;  a  world  to  fill  with 
despair  the  most  trustful  heart,  and  tax  too  much  the 
strongest  faith.  But  if  it  be  man's  death,  all  is  clear. 
That  which  cannot,  may  not,  must  not,  be  man's  life,  may 
be  his  death.  How  should  his  death  not  be  even  such  ? 
What  should  death  bring  but  sin,  and  folly,  and  delusion, 
and  agony,  and  vain  grasping  at  shadows,  and  sickness, 


198 


OF  DEATH. 


[B.  III. 


and  remorse?  What  but  this  world  should  bo,  could  be, 
the  fruit  of  the  death  of  man  ?  Knowing  the  death  and 
the  redemption,  the  very  spirit  of  prophets  and  apostles 
comes  into  our  hearts,  and  their  words  become  so  simple 
and  so  true.  Man  is  dead,  therefore  we  are  as  we  are  ; 
and  God  has  saved  us,  and  will  make  us  new,  yea,  give  us 
life  in  Christ. 

For  the  impossibility  we  have  found  in  recognising  that 
Christ  is  the  Saviour  of  the  world,  in  believing  that  He 
will  draw  all  men  unto  .Him,  arises  from  our  belief  that 
this  state  is  the  life  of  man  ;  from  our  not  having  been  able 
to  see  that  the  New  Testament  calls  it  death.  If  we  can 
alter  our  point  of  view  here,  all  the  else  insuperable  diffi- 
culties in  the  absolute  redemption  of  the  world  arc  gone. 
Clear  and  consistent,  satisfying  all  demands  of  conscience, 
and  heart,  and  intellect,  stands  before  us  God's  scheme 
and  solution  of  the  world  :  man,  from  death,  is  being  made 
alive. 

Surely  we  should  let  every  book  explain  itself,  and  be 
judged  by  its  own  words.  The  Bible  may  be  rejected  as 
a  guide  ;  every  one  must  judge  for  himself  of  its  value : 
but  to  interpret  it  against  itself  is  to  do  a  grievous  wrong. 
To  ignore,  when  it  speaks  of  death,  that  it  has  defined 
death,  and  expressly  stated  what  it  is  ;  that  it  speaks  of 
the  present  state  of  man  as  a  dead  state ;  is  to  deal  it  hard 
measure.  How  can  we  be  surprised  that,  dealing  thus 
with  its  language,  we  should  be  conducted  to  results  which 
appal  our  hearts,  and  baffle  our  thoughts,  and  clothe  in  ten- 
fold mystery  the  already  too  great  mystery  of  life ;  that 
although  we  call  it  the  Book  of  God,  it  remits  still  to  the 
future  those  great  questions  of  His  love  and  justice,  which 
it  is  the  very  life  of  our  souls  to  know.  We  do  too  great 
a  wrong,  and  reap  too  severe  a  punishment.  For  black- 
ness and  darkness  cl©se  around  our  souls,  and  our  hearts 


c.  L] 


OF  DEATH. 


199 


groan  with  an  anguish  that  will  not  be  subdued,  that  faith 
itself  cannot  calm,  nor  the  very  love  of  Christ  cheer  with 
one  gleam  of  hope.* 

But  when  we  are  seeking  to  understand  the  Bible,  what 
does  it  matter  what  ive  think  is  life,  what  ive  think  death 
must  be  ?  The  sole  question  is,  what  does  that  book  speak 
of  as  life,  what  does  it  term  death  ?  Using  its  words  con- 
sistently with  themselves,  nothing  can  exceed  the  simplicity 
of  its  statements.  For  are  they  not  summed  up  in  this  : 
that  Christ  has  died  for  men  that  they  may  be  saved  from 
death,  and  that  believing  in  Him  they  shall  have  life  ? 
What  affirmation  can  be  plainer,  if  we  remember  that  the 
same  testimony  has  affirmed  that  men  are  dead?  Christ 
has  died  to  save  men  from  the  death  in  which  they  are. 
The  same  men  that  proclaim  the  sacrifice  of  Christ,  to  ob- 
tain life  for  man,  proclaim  his  present  death.  The  two 
statements  are  integral  portions  of  one  whole.  To  sepa- 
rate them  is  to  distort  and  to  destroy. 

We  have  been  regarding  the  death  from  which  Christ 
saves  as  temporal,  as  a  thing  which  may  be  postponed. 
But  it  is  eternal ;  it  has  relation  to  man's  actual  being, 
not  to  changing  circumstances.  All  our  embarrassment 
has  arisen  from  our  not  having  been  able  to  perceive  that 
this  is  death,  that  man  is  now  and  truly  dead  ;  from  bend- 
ing all  the  words  which  declare  it  into  another  meaning. 
Some  have  said,  the  death  is  future,  man  is  condemned  to 
die,  in  danger  of  dying :  some,  it  is  a  figure  :  some,  it  is  a 
death  indeed,  in  a  spiritual  sense,  but  different  from  that 
true  death  of  misery  which  is  to  ensue  hereafter.     But  all 


•  See  what  that  sincere  and  earnest  man,  Henry  Rogers,  says:— 'For 
my  part,  I  fancy,  I  should  not  grieve  if  the  whole  race  of  mankind  died  in 
its  fourth  year.  As  far  as  tee  can  see,  I  do  not  know  that  it  would  be  a  thing 
much  to  be  lamented.' — Gr&jsorCs  LdterSf  f^econd  Ed.  p.  22. 


200 


OF  DEATH. 


[B.  III. 


these  opinions  have  had  one  basis ;  inability  to  believe 
that  this  state,  which  men  like  so  well,  could  be  the 
death  spoken  of  in  such  terras  of  awe.  From  the  death 
of  man  has  come  this  thought ;  the  saddest  fruit,  the  most 
convincing  proof,  of  the  very  death  that  is  denied.  For 
what  is  it  we  are  saying,  but  even  this,  that  mere  wicked- 
ness, mere  self-indulgence,  merely  being  alienated  from 
God,  is  not  worthy  to  be  called  death,  unless  there  be 
misery  conjoined  with  it ;  that  suffering  is  more  to  be 
feared  than  sinning?  In  that  speaks  the  death  of  man,  it 
needs  no  more  words  to  prove  it;  that  is  death  whicli 
makes  man  fear  suffering  more  than  sinning. 


i 


CHAPTER    II. 

OP   LIFE. 

We  know  that  we  have  passed  from  death  to  life. 

From  the  state  in  which  man  is,  Christ  died  to  save  him. 
His  life  he  gives  for  man  who  has  not  life.  So  we  are 
made  to  know  God  in  the  true  sense  of  knowing,  and  in 
that  knowledge  have  our  part  in  the  life  eternal. 

All  the  difficulties  which  have  rendered  the  nature  of 
the  eternal  life  bestowed  by  Christ  a  matter  of  dispute, 
resolve  themselves  when  it  is  remembered  that  man  is 
dead.  For  the  affirmation  of  the  New  Testament  is,  that 
in  Christ  is  given  to  men  a  life  which  makes  them  alive 
from  death.  Therefore  this  life  is  the  opposite  of  the 
death  in  which  they  are.  If  that  be  eternal  life,  then  is 
this  eternal  death.  So  that  by  the  death  which  we  know, 
we  may  know  also  what  the  life  must  be.  But  as  we  can- 
not know  this  life  by  sense,  so  neither  can  we  know  it 
intellectually.  We  cannot  think  it.  A  chief  part  of  all  the 
difficulty  that  has  beset  religious  questions  arises  from  our 
resolution  to  conceive  the  eternal.  It  cannot  be  conceived. 
It  is  to  be  known  spiritually,  actually  ;  it  will  not  be  put 
into  our  thought.  Having  learnt  that  by  our  intellect 
we  can  know  no  veritable  fact  at  all,  but  only  the  appear- 
ance of  things,  how  should  we  suppose  that  by  the  intellect 
we  should  know  the  eternal  ?  We  have  made  ourselves 
9*  (201) 


202 


OF  LIFE. 


[B.  III. 


the  standard,  and  projecting  our  own  deadness  into  an 
endless  future,  have  called  that  eternal  life ;  but  God's 
thoughts  are  not  as  our  thoughts.  Eternal  life  is  that  true 
life  by  want  of  which  man  is  such  as  he  is.  It  is  spiritual, 
actual  life  ;  a  life  known  within  the  soul,  but  not  to  be 
conceived  in  thought.  Whatever  is  so  conceived  becomes 
in  that  very  process  no  more  eternal. 

The  first  necessity  for  a  right  attitude  towards  the 
eternal  is,  that  we  should  abandon  the  supposition  that  our 
intellects  can  conceive  it.  The  eternal  is  that  unknown 
fact,  of  which  all  the  things  that  the  intellect  deals  with 
testify,  but  which  is  not  in  them  ;  the  want  of  which  in  us 
prevents  our  knowing  that  hidden  fact.  When  science 
and  philosophy  unite  in  testifying  that  the  essence  of 
things  is  not  by  them  to  be  discovered,  they  do  but  re- 
affirm St.  Paul's  declaration,  that  spiritual  things  muj^t  be 
spiritually  discerned.  The  eternal  is  known  in  living.  It 
is  the  fact  which  the  intellect  has  proved  and  confessed  its 
inability  to  grasp.  'Eye  hath  not  seen  nor  ear  heard, 
neither  hath  entered  into  the  heart  of  man  the  things  that 
God  hath  prepared  for  them  that  love  Him  ;  but  He  hath 
revealed  them  to  us  by  his  spirit.' 

That  we  do  not  know  the  eternal  is  our  death.  Under- 
standing that  this  state  of  man  is  his  death,  it  is  no  more 
a  difficulty  that  we  cannot  think  the  eternal,  nor  conceive 
it,  and  must  put  aside  that  which  it  is  our  natural  tendency 
to  suppose.  If  man  be  dead,  it  should  be  so.  The  living 
knows  the  eternal ;  it  were  a  contradiction  that  the  dead 
should  know  it.  Let  the  intellect  take  its  place,  as  deal- 
ing not  with  the  very  fact  of  being  but  with  phenomena, 
which  is  now  no  more  a  religious  dogma  only,  but  tlie 
accepted  result  of  physical  and  metaphysical  researcli, 
and  the  meaning  of  the  eternal  ceases  to  be  difficult, 
ceases  to  be  fraught  with  painfulness,  either  to  the  intel- 


c.  II.] 


OF   LIFE. 


203 


lect  on  the  one  hand,  or  to  tlie  heart  upon  the  other. 
The  eternal  ought  to  be,  as  it  is,  inconceivable  by  thought, 
else  it  could  not  be  true  being  ;  else  must  it  also  be  a  pass- 
ing, empty  show,  like  earthly  things.  To  know  the  eternal 
is  to  Live. 

Once  let  it  be  seen  that  there  is  a  deadness  in  man,  and 
all  is  simple.  He  is  no  standard  ;  his  necessary  concep- 
tions have  no  authority,  are  necessarily  wrong.  That 
which  truly  is,  cannot  be  according  to  his  thoughts,  but  he 
has  to  be  made  different,  to  be  raised  to  a  truer  state  of 
being  and  of  feeling.  Yet  it  is  not  difficult  for  us  to  know 
that  there  must  be  a  state  of  being  differently  related  to 
time  from  ours  ;  a  life  to  which  the  phenomenal  things  are 
not  the  realities  as  they  are  to  us.  We  grow  old,  the 
lapse  of  time  affects  and  alters  us  ;  our  being  is  in  time, 
and  is  determined  by  its  course.  But  not  so  is  God.  He 
is  not  older.  Time  and  things  in  time  are  not  to  Him  as 
they  are  to  us  ;  not  the  realities  of  His  existence.  They 
are  to  Him  as  they  truly  are.  To  be  in  time  is  for  mere 
phenomena  to  be  our  realities.  God  is  as  a  rock  beside 
which  flows  a  stream  ;  we  are  as  a  straw  which  it  bears 
along.  That  is  the  eternal  life  which  God  possesses  ;  of 
that  man  is  to  partake. 

*  This  is  life  eternal,  to  know  Thee.'  Eternal  life  is  that 
which  Christ  had  given  to  His  disciples,  because  in  seeing 
Him  they  had  seen  and  known  the  Father  also.  In  believ- 
ing in  Christ  we  pass  from  death  unto  life.  But  it  may  be 
said  :  Believing  in  Christ  does  not  make  us  different ;  we 
remain  just  as  we  were,  except  in  the  feeling  of  our  hearts. 
That  is  true.  The  individual  life  does  not  remove  the 
deadness  of  man.  That  deadness,  as  it  does  not  arise  from 
a  condition  affecting  the  individual  alone,  so  it  cannot  be 
remoVed  by  an  individual  change.  Tlierefore,  the  man 
who  has  received  otornal  lito  fi-om  Christ  is  described  thus 


204 


OF  LIFE. 


[B.  III. 


by  St.  Paul :  *  I  delight  in  the  law  of  God  after  the  inward 
man,  but  I  see  another  law  in  ray  members,  warring 
against  the  law  of  my  mind,  and  bringing  me  into  captiv- 
ity to  the  law  of  sin,  which  is  in  my  members.  We  wait 
for  the  adoption,  the  redemption  of  our  body.'  In  him 
there  is  life  struggling  with  death  ;  a  life  that  is  given  to 
him  by  Christ,  a  death  that  he  partakes  with  humanity. 
The  perfect  redemption  of  the  individual  is  in  the  redemp- 
tion of  man.  When  man  is  saved,  then  there  is  no  more 
death.    Death  is  destroyed.     God  is  all  in  all. 

For  eternal  life  is  not  everlasting  happiness.  Salvation 
is  not  being  saved  from  misery.  These  are  blessings 
which  man's  heart  longs  for  infinitely  more.  In  all  his 
ignorance  and  wickedness,  man  is  not  sunk  so  low  as  not 
to  feel  that  what  he  wants  is  something  better  than  happi- 
ness, that  the  curse  under  which  he  groans  is  not  suffering. 
He  knows  not  wliat  it  is,  nor  how  to  utter  it.  His  prayers 
are  inarticulate,  his  toils  a  weary,  undirected  strife.  But 
in  his  inmost  soul  he  cries  out  to  be  delivered  from  him- 
self, to  be  saved  from  the  fatal  spell  that  is  upon  him, 
whereby  he  must  seek  his  own  pleasure,  to  gratify  and  to 
exalt  himself ;  to  be  saved  from  passion,  from  the  inward 
gnawing  death  that  leads  him  into  all  evil,  itself  the 
greatest  of  all  evils.  He  wants  life  to  be,  to  act,  to  be  no 
more  a  slave. 

Eternal  life  is  given  us  in  Love.  God's  own  life  put 
within  man's  breast.  When  man  is  made  alive,  we  shall 
no  more  be  compelled  to  pursue  our  own  happiness,  to  seek 
for  self-satisfaction.  Love  shall  be  made  perfect  in  us. 
Our  life  shall  be  like  God's,  one  with  His,  who  lives  in 
giving  only.  And  while  the  death  yet  cleaves  to  man, 
still  we  have  the  life.  A  new  being  is  within  us  ;  a  life, 
a  knowledge,  a  relation,  that  we  had  not  before.  For  we 
know  God  :  know  Him  truly  as  He  is,  the  infinite,  sacrific- 


c.  II.] 


OF  LIFE. 


205 


ing  Love.  Our  whole  thought  of  life  and  good  is  altered  ; 
in  giving  up  ourselves  is  all  our  glory,  all  our  hope  and 
wish.  The  whole  fact  of  the  universe  is  altered  to  us,  for 
we  know  its  life,  and  source,  and  centre. 

We  are  delivered  from  the  death  that  bound  us.  It  is  no 
more,  as  it  was  before,  necessary  to  us  to  have  concern  for 
ourselves  :  by  knowing  God  we  have  been  made  free. 
For  knowing  Him,  first  we  trust  him  perfectly,  and  feel  no 
more  the  need  of  caring  for  ourselves  ;  and  next,  we  loathe 
and  detest  ourselves  that  we  are  so  unlike  Him.  All  our 
heart  and  soul  are  changed.  To  have  regard  to  self  is 
hateful  to  us,  for  we  know  that  that  is  death.  All  that 
is  good  or  lovely  in  our  eyes  is  in  utter  sacrifice.  Suffer- 
ing and  loss  have  terrors  for  us  no  more.  Our  joy  is  to  be 
one  with  God  in  giving-:  we  wantonly  the  perfect  deliver- 
ance from  death  ;  we  rejoice  with  joy  unspeakable,  know- 
ing that  God  is  making  that  deliverance  complete  in  giv- 
ing life  to  all  men,  we  also  being  fellow-workers  herein 
with  him.  Our  life  is  eternal.  We  know  that  passing 
things  are  not  the  fact  with  which  we  have  to  do.  We 
look  for  the  crown  of  life  in  heaven  ;  the  crown  of  life  in 
love  perfected,  in  sacrifice  made  complete. 


C.  III.] 


OF  DAMNATION. 


207 


CHAPTER    III. 


OP   DAMNATION. 


IX0OS5. — I  draw  the  sword  myself.    T^e  it  and  hit 

The  innocent  mansion  of  my  love,  my  heart. 

PoiA^no. —  Hence,  vile  instrument ; 

Thou  Shalt  not  damn  my  hand.  Otfrn^ine- 

He  that  doubteth  is  damned  if  he  eat. 


If  thy  hand  offend  thee,  cut  it  off;  it  is  bettor  for  thee  to  enter  into  life  maimed,  than 
having  two  hands  to  go  into  hell,  into  the  fire  unquenchable  ;  where  their  worm  dieth 
not  and  their  fire  is  not  quenched. 

He  that  beliovcth  not  shall  be  damned. 

Our  fatal  habit  of  putting  the  eternal  at  a  distance  from 
us  perplexes  all  our  thoughts  of  Scripture.  Therefore  it 
is  that  we  hardly  dare  to  speak  the  word  damnation,  that 
to  utter  it  seems  like  sacrilege  :  we  have  put  it  so  far 
away.  But  that  which  the  writers  meant  was  not  a  thing 
they  were  afraid  to  speak  of.  They  had  not  banished  it 
into  the  future.  The  damnation  of  which  they  spoke  was 
a  thing  that  is,  an  eternal  thing,  tlie  true  and  actual  death 
of  man.  Men  are  damned  in  sinning.  Why  is  it  that 
when  the  Bible  speaks  of  death  and  of  damnation  as  pres- 
ent things,  we  reduce  them  to  so  small  a  matter  ;  but 
when  it  uses  the  same  words  with  a  reference  to  tlie 
future,  immediately  we  fill  them  with  a  meaning  the  most 
awful  we  can  conceive  ?  Why  do  we  make  this  distortion 
of  its  language  ;  why  put  its  words  thus  upon  the  rack,  and 
cramp  or  stretch  their  meaning  according  to  a  rule  of 
tenses  ?    Do  we  not  deal  thus  with  the  Bible,  because  this 

[206] 


state  of  sinfulness  is  pleasant?  We  cannot  believe  that 
this  is  really  the  damnation,  because  men  like  it.  It  never 
occurred  to  us  that  to  like  to  be  wicked  could  be  to  be 
damned.     That  was  not  bad  enough. 

Here  we  behold  ourselves.  We  have  taxed  our  thoughts 
to  find  the  worst  thing  that  could  befall,  and  have  invented 
suffering.  Of  all  the  many  sins  we  must  confess  to  God, 
is  not  this  the  head  and  chief?  It  is  without  excuse  ;  for 
it  is  a  violence  not  only  to  the  light  of  nature,  but  to  the 
plainest  use  of  the  very  words  on  which  the  meaning  has 
been  forced.  The  fatal  virus  of  the  disease  has  turned  the 
very  medicine  into  poison.  For  to  what  end  is  the  Bible 
written,  but  to  make  us  know  and  feel  the  awfulness  of 
sin,  to  make  us  afraid  of  sinning,  to  rouse  the  capabilities 
of  our  nature  to  a  knowledge  of  what  it  is  to  be  opposed 
to  God,  to  instil  into  us  a  fear  of  wrong  as  wrong,  to  give 
us  that  new  feeling  which  should  make  our  hearts  respond 
to  words  which  describe  a  sinful  state  as  the  chief  of  evils? 
Why  should  not  sin  be  treated  as  the  most  awful  of 
things?  Is  it  not  so  ?  Do  not  all  men,  as  they  approach 
to  God,  more  and  more  feel  it  so  ?  How,  tlien,  should 
God  not  speak  so  ? 

Sinning  is  damnation  ;  self-indulgence  is  to  be  cast  into 
hell.  These  are  the  most  fearful  terrors,  the  chief  of  evils, 
in  the  sight  of  God.  Let  the  words  be  read  and  tested. 
The  difference  between  that  thought  and  ours  is  the  differ- 
ence between  life  and  death.  Does  not  that  which  we 
most  like  or  dread  depend  on  what  we  are  ?  Self-indul- 
gence is  hell,  the  worm  that  dieth  not,  and  the  fire  that  is 
not  qr  iched,  unbridled  passions.  It  is  better  maimed  to 
enter  into  life,  than  having  two  hands  to  go  into  hell. 
But  what  life  is  we  know  :  it  is  the  opposite  to  self-indul- 
gence, the  being  one  with  God  ;  and  unchecked  passions 
are  an  unquenchable  fire,  a  consuming  flame  that  is  never 


208 


OF  DAMNATION. 


[B.  III. 


slaked,  that  burns  more  fiercely  in  tlie  soul  with  each  at- 
tempt to  quench  it.  No  words  can  be  more  simple  than 
are  these ;  it  is  their  truth  that  makes  them  difficult. 
That  the  worm  dieth  not,  and  the  fire  is  not  quenched, 
proves  them  not  physical.  Physicalness  is  excluded  by 
denial  of  its  characteristic  property  of  ceasing.  A  worm 
and  fire  not  physical,  what  should  they  be  but  the  devour- 
ing and  consuming  passions,  consuming  ever,  yet  leaving 
unconsumed ;  or  how  should  a  true-seeing  man  speak  of 
them  otherwise  ?  *  Enter  into  life  with  loss  of  all  things, 
but  be  not  self-indulgent,  be  not  cast  into  hell.' 

The  message  of  the  New  Testament  to  men  is  that  they 
are  damned,  and  they  know  that  it  is  true.  They  do  not 
fear  a  future  damnation  that  is  not  like  the  present.  Men 
know  that  they  are  damned  :  that  the  burning  passions  in 
their  hearts  are  never  quenched,  nor  can  be  quenched  ; 
that  one  desire  sated,  another  takes  its  place ;  that  the 
imperious  appetites  are  their  plague  and  torment.  To 
preach  another  damnation  to  them  than  this,  is  to  pervert 
the  Scripture,  to  array  against  ourselves  the  truest  feelings 
of  humanity.  This  is  eternal  death,  the  lake  that  burneth 
with  fire  and  brimstone.  It  is  here  and  now  ;  to  see  it  we 
need  only  that  our  eyes  be  opened,  we  need  only  that  the 
life  that  was  in  the  men  who  wrote  should  be  in  us,  who 
read.  For  do  we  ask  what  hell-fire  is  ?  God  has  answered 
us.  *  If  thine  enemy  hunger,  feed  him,  and  if  he  thirst, 
give  him  drink  ;  for  in  so  doing  thou  slialt  heap  coals  of 
fire  on  his  head.'  Here  is  shown  us  hell :  God  overcoming 
evil  with  good,  consuming  man  by  bounty.  For  what  is  it 
fills  our  hearts  with  passions,  and  burns  us  up  with  the  fire 
of  insatiable  desires,  but  God's  own  gifts,  the  charms  of 
nature,  the  good  things  with  which  He  crowns  our  life? 
God's  gifts  kindle  the  fire  within  us.  His  bounties  are  our 
torment.    So  he  casts  us  into  hell,  surrounding  us  with 


c.  ni.] 


OF  DAMNATION. 


209 


good  ;  for  love  is  fire.  To  be  loved  by  a  man  wliom  wo 
treat  as  an  enemy,  is  to  have  coals  of  fire  heaped  upon  our 
head.  To  be  loved  as  God  loves  us,  we  being  such  as  we 
are,  is  to  be  cast  into  a  lake  of  fire. 

God  saves  us  from  hell,  saves  us  from  damnation  ;  saves 
us  through  believing.  He  who  believeth  not  shall  bo 
damned  ;  must  be,  certainly,  inevitably,  will  be.  He  who 
believes  not  on  Christ,  who  does  not  know  God  in  Him, 
know  Him  to  be  such  as  Christ  reveals  Him,  will  be 
damned.*  He  will  be  wicked  ;  there  is  no  escape  from 
sin,  and  the  dominion  of  self,  but  by  faith  in  Christ,  for, 
save  tlirough  Him,  God  cannot  be  known.  There  is  no 
other  name  given  among  men  whereby  we  must  be  saved. 
If  God  be  not  known  as  Christ  reveals  Him,  nothing  else 
can  avail  to  extricate  man  from  death. 

The  men  who  wrote  about  damnation  in  the  Scriptures 
saw  things  rightly ;  they  had  true  perceptions,  feelings 
justly  attuned  to  the  reality.  They  were  living  men.  To 
them,  to  sin  was  to  be  damned  ;  they  put  sinning  above 
and  before  all  other  things  as  the  great  and  chief  calamity  ; 
the  fact  that  there  was  a  power,  a  life,  that  could  save 
men  from  sinning,  filled  their  hearts  with  wonder,  and 
made  their  lips  overflow  with  words  that  cannot  be  for- 
gotten. That  fact  made  them  beside  themselves ;  dwarfed 
all  things  else  in  their  regard  ;  Christ  crucified  was  all  to 
them.  By  his  power  on  themselves  they  knew  that  He 
could  give  life  to  the  dead,  for  He  had  quickened  them, 
and  raised  them  up,  and  made  them  dwell  in  heaven  ;  so 
that  the  life  they  lived  was  not  their  own  but  God's  in 
them.    How  could  they  doubt  that  He  should  save  others 

*  In  the  original  language  of  the  Bible  there  is  no  distinction  for  shall 
and  will.  Either  word  may  be  used  as  seems  most  expressive  of  the  sense. 
Perhaps  the  beauty  is  impaired  sometimes  in  our  translation  by  the  use  of 
shall  where  will  might  be  bettor. 


/' 


210 


OF   DAMNATION. 


[B.  III. 


C.  III.] 


OF   DAMNATION. 


211 


also  ?  complete  the  work  Tie  had  begun,  and  take  away 
the  sin  of  the  world  ?  For  the  heart  of  man  responds  to 
their  words,  what  they  have  affirmed  is  true.  Sinning  is 
worse  than  suflfering  :  we  know  and  mean  it  in  spite  of 
our  own  words.  To  be  damned  is  not  to  be  miserable,  but 
to  be  bad.  The  love  of  Christ,  the  sight  of  God  as  He 
truly  is,  must  have  power  to  save  all  men  from  sin.  Christ 
must  draw  all  men  to  Him. 

But  although  damnation  is  not  suffering,  it  is  not  there- 
fore to  be  inferred  that  suffering  is  not  threatened  as 
punishment  for  sin.     It  is  so  threatened.     All  sin  brings 
punishment :  God  will  render  to  everv  man  according  to 
his  works.    But  it  is  from  damnation,  and  from  death,  that 
Christ  saves  us.     His  work  has  relation  to  the  eternal. 
Our  view  here  has  been  obscured,  as  everywhere,  by  treat- 
ing the  eternal    as  future.      Throughout  the   Scripture, 
Christ  is  spoken  of  as  saving  us  from  sin,  from  corruption, 
from  vain  conversation,  from  this  evil  world,  never  from 
pain ;  from  that  which  is  the  worst  thing,  not  from  that 
which  we  most  fear.     Our  familiarity  with  the  latter  idea 
renders  us  unconscious  what  we  read.    The  death  that  is 
our  present  actual  state,  our  condition  in  relation  to  the 
eternal,  is  that  evil,  fearful  thing  from  which  Christ  has 
died  to  redeem  us.    In  this  He  makes  God  at  once  just, 
and  the  justifier  of  him  that  believes.    Our  thoughts  being 
other  than  those  of  the  Bible,  we  have  with  great  effort 
adapted  its  words  to  meet  them  ;  we  have  transferred  them 
from  the  eternal  and  spiritual  that  is,  to  the  suffering  or 
happiness  that  we  look  forward  to.     Our  conceptions  are 
so  moulded  to  this  latter  idea,  that  it  is  difficult  to  look 
simply  at  the  words  of  Scripture,  and  see  how  much  more 
is  in  its  declarations  than  in  our  thoughts.     Christ  died 
for  the  world,  to  save  it  from  the  curse  of  death  under 
wliich  it  is ;  not  a  future  death  of  misery,  but  an  actual 


'^ 


death  of  worse  than  misery  ;  a  death  which  involves  our 
liking  that  which  is  evil. 

We  find  it  hard  to  believe  that  damnation  can  be  a 
thing  that  men  like.  But  does  not  what  every  being  likes 
depend  on  what  it  is  ?  Is  corruption  less  corruption,  in 
man's  view,  because  worms  like  it?  Is  damnation  less 
damnation,  in  God's  view,  because  men  like  it?  And 
God's  view  is  simply  the  truth.  Surely  one  object  of  a 
revelation  must  be  to  show  us  things  from  God's  view  of 
them,  that  is,  as  they  truly  are.  Sin  truly  is  damnation, 
though  to  us  it  is  pleasure.  That  sin  is  pleasure  to  us, 
surely  is  the  evil  part  of  our  condition. 

Suppose  there  were  a  child  who  liked  to  eat  dirt,  should 
we  not  tell  him  that  it  was  filthy  ?  But  how  could  he 
think  that  to  be  filthy  which  he  liked  ?  Would  he  not 
suppose  that  we  referred  to  some  consequences,  to  some 
future,  which  he  would  not  like  ?  When  God  warns  us  of 
damnation,  present  and  future,  we,  liking  it,  think  He  is 
speaking  of  consequences.  But  the  instructed  child  learns 
that  to  eat  dirt  is  filthy,  then  he  understands  his  teacher  ; 
man  learns  that  sin  is  damnation,  then  he  understands  his 
Maker. 

A  sinful  state  is  eternal  death.  It  is  death  in  relation 
to  that  absolute  being  which  the  eternal  denotes.  The 
application  of  the  word  translated  eternal  to  an  everlast- 
ing duration  arises  from  our  misapprehension  of  man's 
present  state,  from  the  false  conception  we  entertain  of  all 
things,  through  our  ignorance  of  man's  want  of  life.* 
Men  are  now  dead  or  damned  eternally ;  a  state  from 

*  If  the  question  be  raised  as  to  the  grammatical  meaning  of  th§  word 
aluviag,  is  it  not  admitted  that  it  was  never  used  to  express  everlasting 
duration  before  the  New  Testament  was  'WTittcn?  "Was  it  not  expressly 
defined  by  Plato  as  not  bearing  that  meaning,  and  applied  by  him  to  denote 
a  kind  of  being  not  subject  to  conditions  of  duration?    See  the  Timcevt. 


212 


OF  DAMNATION. 


[B.  III. 


which  eternal  life  raises  them.  An  eternal  state  is  one 
which  relates,  not  to  our  conditions  or  circumstances,  but 
to  our  very  being.  Christ  gives  eternal  life,  a  life  that 
makes  us  truly  and  absolutely  living  ;  not  such  life  as  the 
physical,  which  leaves  us  dead,  being  life  only  in  seeming. 
So  sin  is  true  and  absolute  death,  not  like  the  physical 
death  which  does  but  appear  to  be  so.  In  sin  we  have 
consciousness  of  death.  *  Sin  revived,'  says  St.  Paul,  *  and 
I  died.'  Doubtless  man  shall  not  like  sin  for  ever!  He 
must  feel  it  differently,  feel  it  the  greatest  misery.  But 
how  can  that  be  to  be  damned  ?  Surely  that  were  rather 
to  be  saved. 


I 


i 


CHAPTER   IV. 


OF  BEDEMPnOW. 


Foolish  and  hartful  lusts,  which  drown  men  in  destruction  and  perdttkm. 

The  great  fact  of  the  New  Testament  is  the  redemption 
of  the  WORLD  ;  the  saving  of  all  men  through  Christ. 
Perhaps  no  single  statement  is  so  often  repeated,  or  as- 
serted in  so  many  different  forms.  It  would  be  of  no  avail 
to  enumerate  the  passages ;  for  the  most  part  they  are 
well  known.  We  have  rather  to  ascertain  why  they  have 
been  interpreted  to  mean  the  salvation  of  part  of  the  world, 
and  the  final  loss  of  the  rest.  What  necessity  has  acted 
on  our  minds  to  compel  us  to  that  conclusion,  not  less 
against  the  apparent  meaning  of  those  passages,  than 
against  our  own  deepest  hopes  and  wishes  ? 

The  reasons  have  been  of  two  kinds :  in  part  the  ap- 
paren-t  meaning  of  other  passages  of  Scripture,  in  part  the 
evident  fact  that  so  many  men  do  not  believe,  but  die 
without  participating  in  religion.  Of  these  two  elements, 
the  latter  is  that  which  truly  determines  our  opinion.  For 
no  passages  can  be  plainer,  or  more  emphatic,  than  those 
which  seem  to  declare  the  absolute  salvation  of  all  men. 
No  words  can  be  more  direct,  or  apparently  decisive,  than 
such  as  tliese  :  '  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up,  will  draw  all  men  unto 
me.'  '  God  sent  not  His  son  into  the  world  to  condemn 
the  world,  but  that  the  world  through  Him  might  be 

[2131 


\ 


214 


OF  BEDEMPTION, 


[B.  III. 


C.  IV.] 


OF  REDEMPTION. 


215 


saved.  If  there  be  others  which  seem  as  directly  to  affirm 
that  all  are  not  saved,  then  it  must  be  on  other  evidence 
that  the  interpretation  is  decided.  One  class  of  expres- 
sions Will  be  taken  as  the  standard,  according  to  our 
general  conceptions  of  the  world  and  of  man  ;  and  the 
others  conformed  to  them. 

Accordingly,  the  absolute  salvation  of  man  has  been 
given  up,  because  we  could  not  otherwise  understand  that 
which  we  see  in  the  world,  and  especially  the  fact  that  men 
die  unsaved.     That  one  circumstance  outweighs  in  our 
estimate  all  other  arguments.    For  we  have  not  been  able 
to  conceive  the  world  otherwise  than  as  a  probation  for 
eternity.    On  this  theory  we  interpret- all  those  statements 
ot  hcripture  which  declare  that  all  men  are  to  be  made 
partakers  of  life  through  Christ.    It  is  well  that  we  should 
see  clearly  what  we  do.     For  in  truth,  familiarity  with 
the  doctrine  of  a  partial  salvation  of  men  has  so  moulded 
the  thoughts  of  the  greater  part  of  the  believers  in  the 
Bible  that  they  no  longer  see  as  they  read  the  passages 
which  affirm  salvation  of  all,  that  they  have  even  an  ap- 
parent opposition  to  their  idea.    A  certain  meaning  is  so 
constantly  associated  with  them,  that  men  have  almost 
ceased  to  be  aware  that  they  might  have  any  other  ;  their 
force  and  bearing  are  entirely  lost.    How  many  of  those 
who  think  that  some  men  go  after  death  to  a  final  and  un- 
redeemable ruin,  are  aware  that  there  is  in  the  Bible  a 
single  passage  which  opposes  a  difficulty  to  that  opinion  *? 
The  doctrine  of  a  probation  for  an  everlasting  destinv 
and  of  the  final  misery  and  loss  of  a  part  of  mankind,  and 
happiness  of  another  part,  is  man's  natural  supposition, 
from  which  the  New  Testament,  revealing  to  us  God,  and 
ife,  and  death,  as  they  truly  are,  is  the  means  of  our  de- 
liverance     For  a  probation  for  eternity  implies  that  this 
is  man  s  life,  that  men  are  not  dead  ;  it  implies  that  men 


are  not  in  eternity,  but  that  the  eternal  is  a  thing  to  come ; 
it  implies  that  men  are  not  now  damned,  but  only  in 
danger  of  it.   Therefore  we  feel  so  much  difficulty  in  inter- 
preting the  New  Testament,  which  says  the  opposite  of  all 
these  things.     For  that  men  do  feel  this  difficulty,  the  ap- 
peal may  be  made  to  their  own  consciousness.     Simple  it 
is,  indeed,  that  Christ  died  to  save  us,  and  that  believing 
in  Him  we  have  eternal  life.   Ever  the  conviction,  in  what- 
ever ignorance  held,  that  God  sacrifices  Himself  for  us, 
saves  us  from  death,  and  makes  us  new  creatures.    But  of 
the  whole  book,  who  will  say  that  there  is  not  great  diffi- 
culty in  reconciling  it  with  our  conceptions  of  the  world, 
and  with  our  conceptions  of  itself?    Have  we  not  taken 
our  own  view  of  man  and  of  the  world,  instead  of  the  view 
which  it  presents  ?     Convinced  by  its  evidences,  have  we 
not  been  trying  to  submit  our  thoughts  to  its  words,  while 
yet  retaining  a  fundamental  conception  of  ourselves,  which 
those  words  emphatically  set  aside  ?    For  if  we  receive 
from  the  New  Testament  this  thought,  that  men  have  not 
life  but  are  dead,  and  that  Christ  gives  life  to  the  world, 
being  the  Saviour  of  all  men  from  the  death  in  which  they 
are  ;  that  this  salvation  comes,  as  it  can  only  come,  through 
believing  in  Him  ;  and  that  God  wills  that  all  men  should 
believe  ;  that  not  believing  they  must  perish,  or  die,  or  be 
damned,  because  the  only  salvation  from  these  things  is  by 
believing  ;  that  some  men  are  elected,  as  we  see,  to  believe, 
while  others  do  not  believe,  and  incur  the  penalties  of  not 
believing,  but  that  their  unbelief  cannot  make  the  faith  of 
God  of  none  effect,  for  He  has  said, '  I  will  draw  all  men 
unto  me  f  that  Christ,  in  the  end,  shall  destroy  death,  and 
bring  all  things  into  subjection  to  Himself,  so  that  God 
shall  be  all  in  all ;  if  we  keep  steadfastly  in  view  this  fun- 
damental fact,  that  Christ  has  borne  man's  death,  and  will 
make  man  alive,  not  partially  but  absolutely,  and  that  all 


OF  KEDEMPTION. 


[B.  III. 


things  else  have  their  place  subordinately  and  subserviently 
to  this  ;  then  is  not  the  difficulty  gone?  Not  indeed  that 
all  the  New  Testament  can  be  understood.  God  forbid 
that  there  should  not  be  things  in  it  which  arc  beyond  our 
present  thoughts  ;  passages  which  we  must  leave  and  say, 
I  know  not  what  this  means.  But  the  whole  book  is  natu- 
ral and  simple.  No  statement  in  it  embarrasses  the  intel- 
lect, or  racks  the  heart  with  insoluble  moral  problems. 
The  essential  thing  is  that  we  should  accept  from  the  New 
Testament  the  statement  that  men  are  truly,  actually  dead. 
It  refuses  to  be  interpreted  on  the  doctrine  of  man's  life. 
Precisely  there  it  is,  that  its  thoughts  arc  above  our 
thoughts  ;  so  much  above  them,  so  much  truer,  so  much  in 
advance,  that  we  could  not  understand  it.  The  question 
of  religion  turns  upon  this  point :  Is  this  state,  or  is  it  not, 
the  LIFE  of  man. 

If  we  can  see  that  man  is  trulv  dead,  there  is  no  more 
difficulty  respecting  the  absolute  salvation.  For  probation 
is  thereby  excluded,  death  and  probation  are  incompatible. 
We  naturally  suppose  a  probation  because  we  naturally 
suppose  that  we  are  possessors  of  true  life,  that  free-will  is 
freedom.  It  seems  absurd  to  us,  that  this  state  of  being 
should  be  the  result  of  a  loss  and  want  of  life.  Necessarily 
this  must  have  been  our  feeling,  certainly  not  less  if  it  be 
not  true.  Pride  and  great  thoughts  of  self  belong  to  death ; 
more  than  all  other  things  do  they  distinguish  it.  That 
man  necessarily  supposes  his  own  state  to  be  life,  can  afford 
no  evidence  whatever  that  it  is  so ;  none  to  weigh  for  a 
moment  against  the  fact  that  he  perceives  deadness  all 
around  him,  and  finding  no  eternal  in  anything  with  wiiich 
he  has  to  do,  thinks  the  eternal  must  be  to  come.  Too 
plain  it  is  that  man  is  dead  ;  the  being  to  whom  the 
eternal  is  not. 

It  is  true  that  we  arc  practically  under  a  probation  :  wc 


c.  IV.] 


OF  REDEMPTION. 


217 


are  dealt  with  according  to  our  works,  are  under  a  system 
of  trial,  of  rewards  and  punishments.  But  this  is  not  being 
under  probation  for  eternity.  These  are  means  through 
which  the  work  that  is  to  be  done  in  man  is  accomplished : 
means  through  which  his  death  is  removed,  and  he  is 
brought  to  be  no  more  the  subject  of  rewards  and  punish- 
ments. They  do  not  give  the  character  of  probation  to  his 
state,  in  relation  to  the  eternal ;  and  the  express  state- 
ments of  Scripture  exclude  it.  Only  our  own  conceptions, 
overriding  its  declarations  of  man's  death  and  absolute  re- 
demption, could  have  made  us  so  interpret  the  statements 
which  affirm  the  punishment  of  evil-doers.  The  latter  in 
no  way  involves  the  former.  Children  are  subjected  to  a 
system  of  trial,  and  are  dealt  with  by  rewards  and  punish- 
ments, but  a  school  is  not  a  state  of  probation. 

Have  not  the  words  in  the  New  Testament,  which  ap- 
pear to  affirm  the  final  loss  of  part  of  mankind,  received 
that  meaning  against  their  natural  and  necessary  sense, 
because  of  our  own  preconceptions  ?  Have  not  we  our- 
selves put  into  the  Scripture  the  teaching  which  we  find 
there  ?  These  passages  are  of  three  kinds  ;  those  which 
speak  of  eternal  punishment,  those  which  speak  of  death 
as  the  result  of  sinning,  and  those  which  relate  to  election. 
But  reflection  will  remove  the  conception  that  such  words 
are  opposed  to  the  absolute  salvation  of  the  world.  They 
are,  rather,  words  which  necessarily  flow  from  it.  Let  the 
statements  which  affirm  that  the  world  is  to  be  saved  through 
Christ  be  first  received,  and  all  these  passages,  which  seem 
to  us  so  opposite,  conform  themselves  to  it  perfectly.  There 
is  not  even  a  semblance  of  opposition  in  the  words  them- 
selves. For  the  eternal  is  not  future  :  the  state  in  which 
corrupt  men  are  is  eternal  punishment,  or  ruin,  or  perdition:* 


*  Very  remarkable  is  the  expression  Kokaav^  aluvioc  (Matt.  xxv.  46),  an 

10 


/I 


218 


OF  REDEMPTION. 


[B.  Til. 


C.  IV.] 


OF  REDEMPTION". 


219 


a  state  from  which  they  are  set  free  by  having  eternal  life 
given  to  them.     Election  is  a  simple  fact  before  our  eyes. 
Some  believe  and  are  saved,  others  do  not  believe  and  are 
damned :  it  is  God's  grace  and  choice  which  determines 
who  these  are.    But  this  does  not  prevent  the  saving  of  the 
world.     Does  not  St.  Paul,  speaking  of  the  Jews,  say  first, 
*  The  election  hath  obtained  it,  and  the  rest  were  hardened,' 
and  add  immediately  afterwards :  '  So  all  Israel  shall  be 
saved '?    The  passages  which  speak  of  death  as  the  result 
of  individual  sin,  such  as  *  the  end  of  these  things  is  death,' 
present  no  embarrassment  when  the  twofold  aspect  under 
which  men  are  regarded  is  borne  in  mind.    The  individuars 
death  results  from  his  own  sin  ;  the  death  in  which  all  are  is 
a  condition  affecting  man.    Sinning  truly  leads  to  death,  but 
it  is  from  death  that  Christ  redeems.    He  makes  the  dead 
alive.     The  language  of  Scripture  is  consistent  throughout, 
and  perfectly  natural ;  so  natural  and  true  that  we  can- 
not help  speaking  in  the  very  same  words,  when  we  re- 
ceive it  simply  as  it  is.     Taking  as  the  basis  of  the  whole 
that  which  is  laid  as  the  basis,  that  Christ  has  come  to  save 
the  world,  and  will  save  it,  drawing  all  men  to  Himself, 
the  words  of  Scripture  arrange  themselves  in  perfect  order 
and  consistency.     Death  is,  and  will  be,  to  those  who  do 
not  believe  ;  eternal  punishment  will  be  theirs  ;  they  will 
be  cast  into  a  lake  of  fire :  *  the  smoke  of  their  torment 
goeth  up  for  ever  and  ever,  and  they  have  no  rest,  day  nor 
night,  who  worship  the  beast  and  his  image,  and  whosoever 
receiveth  the  mark  of  his  name.'* 

What  we  learn  from  the  Bible  is  the  fearfulness  of  this 


eternal  discipline,  or  chastisement,  a  correction  in  respect  to  the  eternal 
/coWv  means  pruning,  as  of  a  tree.    So  strongly  is  the  meaning  of  discipline 
in  It,  that  It  18  used  for  chastened,  in  the  sense  of  moderate,  desirca.^  ArH 
JBthtOf  iil  12. 

•  Rev.  xiv.  11.    These  words  describe  the  state  of  men  in  this  world. 


state  which  is  ours  ;  this  state  which  men  like  so  well,  the 
evil  of  which  we  naturally  regard  so  lightly,  and  yet  feel 
truly  to  be  so  fearful  when  once  our  eyes  are  opened. 
Shall  we  never  understand  that  we  may  be  in  hell,  and 
like  it ;  that  of  all  evils  that  is  the  worst  and  most  to  bo 
deplored,  and  the  one  of  which,  if  God  speaks  to  us.  He 
must  warn  us  in  the  terms  of  deepest  awe  and  most  touch- 
ing love  ?    Speaking  of  liking  evil,  must  not  He  say : 
*  Turn  ye,  turn  ye,  why  will  ye  die  ? '    He  whose  Life  is 
shown  us  in  the  Cross  ?    How  should  He  speak  of  pain  as 
death,  whose  heart  we  see  in  Jesus  ?     And  for  the  power 
which  should  make  us  flee,  the  terror  by  which  we  should 
be  moved  to  escape,  does  not  God  open  our  eyes  to  see 
things  as  they  are  ?    By  showing  us  Himself,  He  makes  us 
fear  the  true  evil.     He  makes  us  fear  that  which  we  did 
not  fear,  by  making  us  know  that  which  we  did  not  know. 
Can  he,  who  believes  that  he  sees  God  in  Christ,  and  that 
in  Him  is  the  life  of  man,  fail  to  feel  that  sin  is  the  most 
awful  punishment ;  must  he  not  be  saved  from  damnation  ? 
Upon  the  conception  that  the  world  is  not  absolutely  to 
be  saved,  no  view  can  be  taken  that  does  not  bring  us  ap- 
parently into  direct  opposition  with  some  words  of  Scrip- 
ture.    So  the  Calvinist  and  Arminian  systems  continue  to 
divide  the  world,  and  with  no  prospect  of  reconciliation. 
For  each  side  finds  some  of  its  positions  clearly  in  the 
words  of  Scripture  ;  each  finds  other  words  which  it  can 
scarcely  embrace.     Men  are  Calvinists  or  Arminians  ac- 
cording to  whether  they  think  most  of  the  universal  do- 
minion of  God,  or  of  the  free-will  of  man ;  whether  they 
most  demand  justice  or  grace  in  the  divine  dealings.   Their 
fatal  agreement  in  postponing  the  eternal  to  the  future,  and 
seeing  death  in  suffering,  renders  all  other  agreement  im- 
possible.    Very  striking  it  is  to  observe  how  one  man 
rejects  a  provision  of  salvation  for  all,  which  takes  effect 


220 


OF  REDEMPTION. 


[B.  III. 


Upon  some  only  ;  not  perceiving  that  his  own  conception, 
of  a  salvation  not  provided  for  all,  is  even  more  impossible 
to  others,  than  the  thought  that  any  for  whom  Christ  died 
shall  not  be  saved  is  to  himself.  Yet  is  nothing  more 
simple  than  the  union  that  seems  so  far  ofif.  Well  does 
the  Calvinist  afifirm  that  all  for  whom  Christ  died  must  be 
saved  ;  well  the  Arminian,  that  Christ  died  for  the  world, 
for  all  men.  What  then  prevents  that  they  should  unite 
in  affirming  that  the  world  must  be  saved  ?  This  only  : 
that  both  have  a  certain  idea  about  man  and  human  life  ; 
that  both  think  the  eternal  is  an  everlasting  future,  that 
both  think  men  cannot  now  be  dead,  in  the  worst  sense  in 
which  the  New  Testament  speaks  of  death. 

The  doctrine  of  election  receives  beautiful  elucidation 
from  those  words,  *  Strive  to  enter  in  at  the  strait  gate ' ; 
for  those  who  are  saved  are  not  few,  but  a  company  '  whom 
no  man  can  number.'  Evidently  the  words  refer  to  the 
facts  of  life :  few  enter  the  strait  gate,  but  many  go  in  the 
broad  path  which  leads  to  death ;  for  *  she  that  liveth  in 
pleasure  is  dead  while  she  liveth.' 

The  numerous  passages,  especially  in  the  parables,  which 
speak  of  the  separation  of  the  righteous  and  the  wicked, 
and  the  various  terms  in  which  the  future  punishment 
of  some  is  described,  come  to  our  minds  as  if  they  were  in 
opposition  to  a  salvation  which  should  be  effective  in  tlie 
case  of  all.  Yet  why  should  we  conceive  them  to  be  in 
opposition?  Why  should  we  array  against  each  other 
passages  which  do  not  clash  ?  If  the  salvation  of  the 
world  be  absolute,  if  all  men  shall  be  brought  to  Christ, 
are  those  passages  the  less  true  ?  There  is  no  reason  to 
modify  their  language,  or  to  endeavor  to  evade  their  mean- 
ing. The  redemption  of  the  world  from  deatli  does  not 
contravene  punishmeut,  does  not  involve  a  confounding 
of  the  evil  and  the  good.     Let  the  absolute  salvation  be 


c.  IV.] 


OF   REDEMPTION. 


221 


believed  ;  do  those  other  passages  lose  their  meaning, 
their  force,  their  necessity  ?  Sin  shall  be  punished,  the 
workers  of  iniquity  shall  be  banished  from  God  ;  they 
shall  be  overwhelmed  with  '  eternal  ruin,'  *  drowned  in 
destruction,'  yet  none  the  less  shall  Christ  draw  all  men  to 
Him.  None  the  less  is  '  the  free  gift  come  upon  all  men 
unto  justification  of  life.'  The  absolute  salvation  of  all 
men  is  an  explicit  statement  of  the  New  Testament,  an 
emphatic  and  unequivocal  declaration  on  the  part  of  the 
very  men  who  affirm  the  supposed  opposite  things.  Nothing 
more  is  needed  to  prove  them  not  opposed  than  simply  to 
believe  them  all. 

Nor  is  it,  indeed,  difficult  to  understand  why  men,  whose 
aim  and  work  it  was  to  reveal  the  salvation  of  the  whole 
race  of  man,  should  have  dealt  so  largely  on  the  doom  of 
the  evil,  the  punishment  of  sin.  It  behoved  them,  above 
all,  not  to  ignore  the  divine  justice,  to  treat  lightly  the 
demands  of  law,  to  seem  to  confound  good  and  evil.  Their 
part,  especially,  it  must  have  been,  to  show  that  the  de- 
mands of  the  conscience  were  not  set  aside  by  the  salvation 
they  affirmed,  the  wrong  and  guilt  of  human  life  not  dis- 
regarded. How  else  should  they  have  been  believed? 
There  are  many  who  tell  us  that  the  world  shall  come  all 
right  at  last,  that  there  is  nothing  so  much  amiss  ;  but  we 
cannot  believe  them.  Our  conscieiice  tells  a  different 
tale,  demands  a  different  issue.  But  when  the  very  men 
who,  more  than  all  others,  have  stirred  our  conscience, 
opened  our  eyes  to  the  majesty  of  the  divine  law,  the  hate- 
fulness  of  sin,  the  impossibility  of  evil  escaping  vengeance  ; 
when  they  go  on  to  affirm  that,  with  all  this,  as  the  sum 
and  conclusion  of  the  whole,  the  world  is  to  be  redeemed 
from  death,  and  that  God  shall  reconcile  all  things  to 
Himself,  how  should  we  disbelieve  them  ?  on  what  ground 
base  our  disbelief,  what  reason  allege  any  more  for  refusing 


222 


OF  REDEMPTION. 


[B.  III. 


the  gospel  that  they  preach?      They  have  themselves 
anticipated  all  objections,  made  their  own  all  the  ground 
that  might  be  taken  against  them.     Do  we  say  :  that  God 
must  punish  sin?  so  have  they  said :  that  the  holy  must 
be  distinguished  from  the  sinful,  and  a  broad  contrast  of 
fate  allotted  to  them?  so  have  they  said :  that  God  will 
say, '  Depart  from  me  all  workers  of  iniquity'  ?  so  have 
they  said  :  that  tribulation  and  anguish  must  be  the  portion 
of  those  that  do  evil  ?  so  have  they  said  :  that  death  must 
be  the  wages  of  sin,  and  the  wicked  be  destroyed  with  an 
absolute,  an  eternal  ruin,  the  opposite  of  eternal  life  ?  so 
have  they  said.     With  all  this,  ruling,  and  reconciling,  and 
crowning  all,  weaving  all  into  one  scheme  of  glory,  comes 
the  proclamation  of  the  Christ,  the  Redeemer  of  the  world  ; 
who,  first  subduing  all  things  to  himself,  shall  lay  down 
His  honors  at  His  Father's  feet,  and  God  be  all  in  all  ; 
death  swallowed  up  in  victory. 

Shall  we  dare  to  put  against  this  our  preconceptions  ? 
Shall  we  disbelieve  the  Gospel,  because  we  do  not  see  how 
men  are  to  be  saved  after  the  death  of  the  body  ?  What 
avails  our  ignorance  to  overthrow  God's  word  ?  If  we 
examine  ourselves,  do  we  not  find  that  we  have  moulded 
our  opinion  on  the  whole  Gospel,  upon  the  supposition 
that  we  know  what  happens  when  men  die?  On  this 
assumption  is  it  that  we  have  converted  the  proclamation 
of  the  redemption  of  the  world,  to  believe  which  is  life,  into 
an  offer  of  salvation  to  be  accepted  before  the  body's  death 
or  lost  for  ever.  But  how  should  the  dying  of  the  body 
prevent  men  from  believing  in  Christ  ?  How  do  w^e  know 
the  nature  of  the  change  which  passes  upon  men  in  that 
so-called  death  ?  It  is  our  supposition,  indeed,  that  the 
Bible  afiirms  that  there  is  no  salvation  after  death,  but 
have  we  ever  looked  to  see  if  it  be  truly  so  ?* 

♦  The  passages  commonly  quoted  to  prove  this  idea  might  furnish  the 


C.  IV.] 


OF  REDEMPTION. 


228 


But  npt  only  is  the  salvation  of  the  world  afi&rmed  so 
emphatically,  in  direct  terms  by  the  New  Testament 
writers,  it  is  the  spirit  and  life  of  all  they  say.  Allusions 
to  it  break  out  continually,  as  if  it  were  the  great  subject 
of  their  thoughts,  the  great  joy  of  their  hearts,  the  centre 
about  which  their  life  revolved.  It  seems  the  source  and 
consummation  of  all  their  message.  *  He  is  the  propitia- 
tion for  our  sin,'  says  St.  John  ;  '  and  not  for  ours  only, 
but  for  those  of  the  whole  world.'  The  former  could  not 
suffice  without  the  latter,  of  which  it  is,  indeed,  but  an  off- 
shoot and  consequence.  For,  that  Christ  takes  away  the 
sin  of  the  world  is  the  essence  of  the  Gospel ;  the  salva- 
tion of  the  individual  arises  out  of,  and  flows  from,  the 
salvation  of  mankind.  If  Christ  did  not  give  life  to  the 
world,  it  were  given  to  no  man.  A  common  death  and 
curse  is  ours,  a  common  deliverance  only  avails  to  save  us. 

And  in  St.  Paul's  language  a  constant  reference  to  the 
same-  thought  is  seen.  Inseparable  from  the  curse  and 
condemnation,  from  the  threatenings  and  warnings,  ever 
comes  the  fact  of  the  redemption  ;  because  they  never  for- 
got the  redemption,  the  apostles  never  forgot  the  curse ; 
they  were  able  to  assert  the  righteous  judgment  of  God, 
the  unswerving  justice,  the  awfulness  of  the  damnation, 
because  the  salvation  was  ever  present  to  their  thought. 
Our  tongues  falter,  and  our  hearts  fail,  when  we  would 
assert  the  death  that  is  the  wages  of  sin,  because  w^e  see 
not  the  fulness  of  the  life  that  is  the  gift  of  God.  The 
letting  go  of  the  absolute  redemption  benumbs  our  grasp 
of  all  the  rest.  We  dare  not  speak  as  they  spoke,  because 
we  are  not  thinking  as  they  thought.  How  could  we  say 
with  St.  Paul,  *  Therefore  God  shall  send  them  a  strong 


best  evidence  that  it  is  foreign  to  the  Scriptures.  '  As  the  tree  falleth,  so  it 
lieth,'  for  example.  For  furtlier  remarks  on  this  subject,  see  Book  V., 
Dialogue  2. 


224 


OF  KEUEMPTIOX. 


[B.  III. 


delusion  that  they  should  believe  a  lie.  that  thev  all  mio-ht 
be  damned  who  believe  not  the  truth,  but  haveVleasure°in 
unrighteousness  V     Can  we  picture  to  ourselves  wliat  man 
It  must  have  been  who,  thinking  as  we  do  of  damnation 
could  have  written  those  words  ?    But  if  to  be  damned  is 
to  do  sinful  things,  and  if  from  this  damnation  all  men 
must  be  saved,  why  should  it  not  be  even  so  ?     Why 
should  we  shrink  from  words  which  do  but  express  the 
facts  of  the  world's  history?     God   sends  men   stron- 
delusions,  and  they  believe  lies,  and  are  damned.     They 
are  damned  that  they  may  be  saved.     Even  as  God  in- 
cludes all  in  unbelief,  that  he  may  have  mercy  upon  all  •  or 
as  by  the  law  is  the  knowledge  of  sin.     For  how  could 
man  be  saved  except  through  sin  ?      Men  are  not  evil 
because  they  do  wickedly,  but  they  do  wickedly  because 
they  are  evil.     Only  by  the  wickedness  of  our  deeds  could 
we  learn  the  evil  of  our  hearts,  or  know  our  need  of  bein- 
made  new.    If  the  world  were  not  wicked,  if  men  under 
temptation  and  delusion  did  not  run  into  crime,  fall  into 
damnation,  Christ  had  died  in  vain  to  save  it.     To  have 
been  not  sinful,  man  must  have  been  left  in  hopeless  death. 
For  the  history  of  the  world  is  the  making  man  alive  • 
that  is  the  resolution  of  the  mystery  :  Man  being  raised 
from  a  state  so  evil  that  he  might  not  continue  in  it,  a 
Btete  of  which  God's  very  being  necessitates  the  destruc- 
tion.   All  this  sin,  all  this  woe  must  be,  for  death  must  be 
destroyed.     Man  can  not  be  left  the  self-regarder   the 
passional,  inert  being  that  he  is.    At  all  expense  of  sinning 
and  of  suffering  he  must  be  freed.    The  weary  waste  of 
human  life  becomes  quite  new  when  we  see  what  it  is  for 
God's  glory  is  the  light  which  glows  even  in  the  lurid 
flames  of  hell ;  one  glory  with  heaven's  own  briglitne^s 
the  glory  of  eternal  love.     The  fire  that  consumes  all  evil 
lights  with  perpetual  day  the  heavenly  city.     '  God  is 


C.  IV.] 


OF  REDEMPTION. 


225 


glorified  alike  in  those  that  believe  and  in  those  that 
perish.'  He  is  glorified  in  sin  ;  even  in  chief  degree 
glorified  in  sin  ;  for  He  bears  sin,  bears  it  for  man.  That 
evil  thing  which  His  soul  hateth  He  endures  that  man 
may  live.  He  is  glorified  in  sin,  as  when  a  righteous  man 
bears  wrong  and  insult,  unavenged,  for  love.  Then  and 
therein  is  glory,  the  glory  wherewith  God  was  glorified 
when  Christ  hung  upon  the  cross,  the  glory  for  which  He 
prayed  :  *  Glorify  me  now,  with  thine  own  self,  with  the 
glory  which  I  had  with  Thee  before  the  world  was.' 

God  bears  sin  for  love  ;  for  love  of  man.  We  see  Him 
in  the  man  who  bore  our  sins.  He  shows  us  therein  what 
He  is.  No  heart  is  tortured  by  sin  and  misery  like  His, 
whose  prerogative  it  is  to  bear  alone  the  name  of  Love. 
No  bosom  throbs  so  deep  with  pity,  or  burns  so  intense  for 
justice.  But  He  endures  for  love  of  man.  The  infinite 
patience  faints  not,  nor  is  weary.  Nor  hastens  ;  for  there 
is  no  delay.  The  slow  progress  of  the  painful  hours  passes 
not  too  sadly,  the  catalogue  of  wrongs  and  woes  grows 
not  too  full.  The  Father's  eye  watches  the  unfolding  life, 
and  rejoices  over  the  Son  that  from  the  dead  is  made  alive 
again.  For  He  has  sliown  us  how  He  sees  mortal  life  ; 
the  type  and  pattern  of  humanity,  the  Man  to  whom  it  was 
given  to  have  life  in  Himself,  has  revealed  it.  It  is  inter- 
preted in  Christ.  Life,  His  own  life,  given  to  the  dead  ; 
for  in  Him  God  reconciles  the  world  unto  himself,  not  im- 
puting their  trespasses  unto  them. 


10* 


c.  v.] 


OF  HEAVEN. 


CHAPTER    V. 


OF   HEAVEN. 


Ought  not  Christ  to  have  suJTered  these  things,  and  to  enter  into  His  glory? 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  Bible  has  been  laid  as  a  yoke 
upon  the  human  heart.     If  any  man  think  that  a  repudia- 
tion of  its  authority  can  proceed  only  from  the  evil  part 
of  our  nature,  he  has  more  to  learn  respecting  humanity  ; 
he  may  have  much  to  learn  respecting  himself.    For  the 
reproach  has  been  often  uttered,  and  is  widely  believed 
true,  that  the  religion  of  the  Bible  is  a  selfish  religion,  that 
its  main  maxim  is  to  secure  our  own  interests ;  and  men 
whose  hearts  rise  up  against  the  dogma  that  self-interest 
can  be  the  true  or  riglitful  spring  of  human  life,  condemn 
it  unheard.    But  is  it  not  taught  that  the  Bible  makes  self- 
interest  the  basis  of   religion?     Is  not  that  reproach 
inseparable  from  the  doctrine  that  life  and  death  are  hap- 
piness and  suffering  ?    Let  these  ideas  be  refined  to  the 
utmost,  the  pollution  of  self-love  cannot  be  purged  from 
them.    Men  will  still  say,  that  religion  is  but  another 
form  of  self-seeking,  and  not  deliverance  from  it.     The 
world  rejects  a  Gospel  clothed  in  a  garment  which  makes 
it  but  the  reflex  of  themselves.    The  substitution  of  future 
happiness  and  misery  for  life  and  death,  of  something  to 
be  got  for  ourselves  for  deliverance  from  the  necessity  of 
self-regard,  is  the  death  of  Christianity.     It  cannot  rob, 
indeed,  the  death  of  Christ  of  its  saving  power  over  indi- 
[22e] 


227 


1 


1 

ih 


I 


vidual  men,  but  it  despoils  the  Gospel  of  its  prerogative 
and  quenches  in  darkness  the  life  that  should  be  the  light 
of  men. 

For  the  absolute  salvation  of  the  world  must  be  denied 
if  salvation  be  identified  with  a  future  happiness,  with  the 
escape  from  misery  or  suffering.  Necessarily  denied  ;  for 
so  conceived  the  conscience  protests  against  it.  That 
wicked  men  should  pass  to  a  happy  future  after  death 
could  not  be  admitted  ;  the  eternal  laws  of  right  demand 
a  different  result.  Tlie  everlasting  misery,  which  seems  to 
be  the  only  alternative,  is  accepted  of  necessity.  It  is  our 
nature  to  think  of  the  future  in  this  way,  to  conceive  it  as 
the  scene  of  enjoyment  or  of  suffering,  and  to  erect  our 
system  of  religion  on  that  basis.  That  is  a  natural  religion, 
based  on  our  conviction  that  tlie  eternal  life  must  be,  in  its 
essential  elements,  such  as  ours  is  now.  We  stipulate  for 
ourselves  that  we  shall  be  happy,  that  we  shall  have  enjoy- 
ment. We  hold  forth  to  men  that  heaven  consists  in 
highest,  purest  pleasures,  but  in  pleasures  still. 

A  very  different  thought,  indeed,  is  in  the  heart  of  many 
who  hold  this  language.  By  the  happiness  of  heaven  they 
mean  love  only ;  but  the  doctrine  is  that  which  must  be 
spoken  of:  it  is  the  doctrine,  not  the  feeling,  that  is  pre- 
sented to  the  world.  Men  do  not  hear  of  heaven  as  love 
or  life,  but  as  happiness ;  of  hell  as  not  loving  or  death, 
but  as  misery.  This  is  the  Gospel  that  man  rejects,  and 
does  right  to  reject.  The  world  thirsts  and  groans  for  life ; 
it  is  weary  and  in  despair  for  lack  of  love ;  but  a  future 
happiness  it  will  not  have,  a  future  misery  it  does  not  fear. 
With  desperate  and  wild  resolve  it  clutches  the  present ; 
with  a  madness  no  experience  can  tame,  men  pursue  wealth, 
pleasure,  glory ;  the  undying  worm  witliin  them  cries  for 
ever  :  Give.  Thsit  whicli  is  now  is  that  which  is  for  them. 
^Tis  right :  the  voice  of  God  within  them  bids  them  cleave 


228 


OF  HEAVKX. 


[B.  III. 


to  that  which  is.    The  present  is  the  eternal.    A  false, 
deceitful  voice  it  has  been,  that  bade  them  postpone  that 
which  is  now  to  that  which  shall  be  ;  a  wise  defiance  they 
have  hurled  against  it.     If  the  world  would  have  accepted 
a  salvation  from  that  which  is  future,  it  could  not  have 
been  saved ;  for  its  ruin  is  eternal.     The  grasp  upon  the 
present  is  a  mute  protest  for  the  eternal  against  the  tempo- 
ral.    But  to  hold  to  the  present  is  not  to  take  the  seeming 
for  the  fact.     Really  to  cleave  to  that  which  is,  men  must 
know  that  which  is ;  they  must  know  the  eternal.     Men 
are  deceived  ;  they  perish  for  lack  of  knowledge.     God 
has  sent  them  a  strong  delusion,  that  they  should  believe  a 
lie,  for  they  believe  that  the  eternal  is  not  now  ;  that  things 
which  perish  in  the  using  are  the  facts  that  are.    In  very 
truth  they  do  believe  that  a  man's  life  consists  in  the  abun- 
dance of  the  things  that  he  possesses ;  that  life  is  not  eternal 
life,  but  transient  pleasures,  pursuits,  activities.     They  do 
not  KNOW,  and  thus  are  lost  and  ruined,  for  phantoms  sway 
them  as  realities  ;  they  make  their  life  in  that  which  does 
but  seem.    Therefore  to  save  them,  God  shows  them  that 
which  IS,  the  true  eternal  fact  which  they  see  not,  although 
'tis  all  around  them.    Himself  He  shows  them.  His  own 
being,  His  own  life,  partaker  of  their  death,  that  they  may 
know  the  eternal  in  utterest  sacrifice  of  self. 

Knowing  what  salvation  is,  it  no  more  does  violence  to 
the  conscience  that  all  men  should  be  saved.  It  subverts 
no  justice,  that  the  power  of  Christ's  love  should  subdue 
in  every  man  all  self-regard,  all  the  force  of  sin  and  of 
desire  :  that,  in  the  redemption  of  man  from  death,  all  men 
should  be  made  complete  in  love,  and,  striving  with  death, 
should  utterly  sacrifice  themselves,  and  endure  like  Him. 
For  this  }s  the  salvation  which  God  bestows :  to  be  one 
with  Christ,  who  while  He  trqd  the  earth  was  in  the  bosom 
of  the  Father ;  ancj  shows  us  heaven  in  sorrow. 


c.  v.] 


OF  HEAVEN. 


229 


Christ  saves  us,  not  from  sufi'ering,  but  from  death  ;  not 
from  pain,  but  from  that  which  makes  us  flee  from  pain. 
The  men  whom  Christ  has  saved  are  known  for  eminence 
in  suffering.  The  stream  of  life  runs  red  with  blood. 
*  They  were  destitute,  afflicted,  tormented  ;  they  wandered 
in  deserts,  and  mountains,  and  dens  and  caves  of  the  earth.' 
To  them  '  it  was  given  to  suffer  for  His  name.'  Life  is, 
not  to  be  afraid  of  suffering  :  to  be  so  perfect  in  love  that 
loss  and  sacrifice,  extremest  and  utter  sacrifice,  the  having 
nothing,  but  giving  and  bearing  all  things,  is  perfect  joy. 
A  life  which  we  cannot  fully  have  while  we  are  in  this 
earthly  state,  while  man  is  wanting  in  his  life  ;  but  by  the 
bestowraent  of  which  on  man  his  deadness  is  taken  away. 
For  herein  differs  the  physical  from  the  spiritual,  man  from 
God  ;  tliat  to  man  sacrifice  is  pain  ;  love  brings  suffering, 
that  which  we  dislike  and  would  fain  avoid.  We  groan, 
being  burdened  with  this  weight  of  flesh,  which,  making 
us  feel  the  work  of  love  as  evil,  puts  perfect  life  beyond 
our  reach.  For  to  God,  and  to  us  when  man  is  wholly 
made  alive,  that  which  we  call  sacrifice,  the  entire  self- 
abnegation,  has  no  pain.  There  is  nothing  to  which  the 
loving  act  is  unwelcome.  For  the  character  of  our  present 
state  is,  that  the  action  which  love  prompts  is  painful ; 
tliere  is  that  in  us  which  is  opposed  to  love.  Here  is  the 
evil  of  our  condition  ;  w^e  like  that  which  is  not  good. 
When  man  is  made  perfect,  the  defect  removed  from  him, 
then  shall  that  which  is  now  painful  to  him  be  no  more 
painful.  Perfect  sacrifice  is  heaven  to  those  in  whom  love 
is  perfect.  Not  in  our  circumstances  can  be  the  change 
from  earth  to  heaven,  it  must  be  in  us  ;  in  the  taking  away 
that  deadness  by  which  man  is  as  he  is.  Then  is  perfect 
sacrifice,  solely  and  only  giving,  no  more  a  pain.  We  can- 
not think  it,  but  we  know  it.  In  our  hearts  we  know  it. 
Not  in  vain  has  Christ  shown  us  God.    Our  thoughts  are 


2:iU 


OF   HEAVEN. 


[B.  III. 


truer  than  our  words  ;  that  which  we  believe  and  hope  for, 
than  that  which  we  profess.  In  heaven  we  look  not  for 
enjoyment  but  for  love.  Only  certain  intellectual  concet> 
tions,  notions  which  we  have  formed  on  abstract  questions, 
interfere.  Our  speculative  ideas  make  us  speak  of  heaven 
as  we  do  not  feel,  and  the  world  laughs  us  to  scorn.  For 
the  Gospel  of  happiness  and  misery  is  not  true  to  the  heart 
of  man.  It  does  not  touch  the  strongest  chords  in  human 
nature,  the  true  movers  of  human  life.  Men  know  indeed 
that  they  love  self,  that  they  are  guided  by  self-regard  and 
pleasure,  that  they  do  seek  what  they  like ;  but  they  also 
despise  themselves  for  it.  They  also  utterly  contemn  that 
life,  and  treat  it  with  bitter  scorn.  That  is  not  humanity. 
It  should  be  no  strange  doctrine  to  man  to  hear  that  he  is 
dead  ;  who  could  have  said  it  more  plainly  than  himself, 
or  in  words  of  deeper  mortification  and  despair,  scarcely 
veiled  by  the  thin  disguise  of  mockery  ? 

It  is  not  true  to  the  human  heart,  it  is  not  fair  to  man, 
to  come  to  him  with  a  religion  that  concerns  his  happiness, 
his  escape  from  suffering.  Such  a  religion  cannot  save  the 
world.  Can  he  be  saved  from  himself?  Can  he  be  made 
different  in  his  inmost  being,  raised  from  regarding  his 
own  pleasure,  from  seeking  his  own  interests?  This  is 
the  question  religion  has  to  solve  for  him.  The  question 
for  humanity,  this  day,  concerns  the  resurrection  of  the 
dead. 

Is  not  that  which  God  gives  to  man  in  saving  him,  in 
making  him  alive,  the  power  of  giving  ;  of  true  and  abso- 
lute self-giving  like  His  own  ?  Is  not  that  our  tvanf,  truly 
what  we  long  for,  and  yet  do  not  know  ?  That  is  the 
Eternal,  that  is  God's  own  life.  That  is  the  water,  drink- 
ing of  wliich  man  shall  thirst  no  more.  For  it  were  mere 
stagnation  and  satiety,  to  get  so  that  we  should  never 
want  again  :  that  were  the  end  of  all  enjoyment,  it  were 


c.  v.] 


OF  IIEAYEX. 


231 


merely  mean  and  small  capacity.  We  are  to  be  delivered 
from  the  necessity  of  getting ;  from  that  which  makes 
hell,  and  is  the  very  bond  of  death.  Getting  and  enjoy- 
ing have  been  tried  all  these  ages :  amid  God's  richest 
gifts,  amid  His  infinite  bounty,  man  has  lived  to  get,  and 
the  result  we  know.  In  no  form  or  way  could  that  con- 
tinue everlastingly.  Can  we  be  made  givers,  be  made 
alive  ?  To  be  made  different  in  ourselves,  so  that  we  shall 
not  be  for  ever  grasping  for  our  own,  that  is  the  true,  the 
eternal  life. 

We  suffer  ourselves  to  speak  as  if  the  cause  of  our  evils 
were  in  God,  and  not  in  ourselves  :  as  if  our  unhappiness 
were  from  the  poorness  of  His  gifts,  because  he  has  sur- 
rounded us  with  conditions  so  imperfect,  with  pleasures  so 
unsatisfying.  But  it  is  not  so.  God's  benefits  know  no 
abatement  nor  increase.  He  gives  us  all  things  riclily  to 
enjoy,  crowning  our  life  with  loving-kindness.  Man 
banishes  the  glory  ;  and  seeing  not,  thinks  darkness  is 
around  him.  Heaven  has  no  other  joy  or  glory  than  is 
now,  but  man  shall  be  different :  active  where  now  he  is 
passive  ;  partaker  of  the  life  which  now  lie  feels  to  crush 
and  to  subdue  him.  And  feeling  all  things  differently,  no 
more  compelled  to  want,  the  unutterable  bliss  of  perfect 
love  is  his.  For  heaven  nothing  must  or  could  be  changed 
but  man.  Nothing  but  the  death  destroyed  or  taken  away. 
Not  less  of  sacrifice,  of  being  utterly  given  up  :  not  less 
of  love  without  us,  only  more  love  within. 

We  deceive  ourselves  if  we  think  that  altering  the  form 
of  our  getting  could  make  a  heaven  ;  the  self  would  be 
our  torment  still.  'Tis  not  the  things  we  have  to  bear 
that  crush  and  ruin  us  ;  it  is  our  necessity  to  get,  our  want 
of  something  for  ourselves,  our  constant  craving.  That  is 
our  perdition.  God  must  give  himself  to  us.  He  must 
be  in  us.    His  life  be  ours.    So  we  shall  want  no  more  ; 


232 


OF  HEAVEN. 


[B.  III. 


have  no  more  emptiness  to  fill.  We  shall  be  like  to  Him, 
able  to  be  content  with  giving.  There  shall  be  no  more 
want.  The  infinite  life  shall  fill  us  ;  the  absolute  love  and 
sacrifice,  in  which  alone  eternal  being  is,  shall  be  ours, 
shall  be  enough  for  us.  Evil  can  be  to  us  no  more,  nor 
sorrow  ;  for  all  sacrifice,  all  giving  up,  all  that  is  now  en- 
during, resigning,  bearing,  being  tortured,  set  aside,  and 
downcast,  then  shall  be  our  joy.  The  death  that  makes  it 
pain  shall  have  been  done  away.  Wliat  is  it  that  never 
faileth,  which  alone  vanisheth  not  away,  but  the  love  that 
cndureth  all  things,  beareth  all  things,  seeketh  not  her 
own  ?  This  shall  never  cease.  Would  we  put  away  self- 
sacrifice  from  heaven  ?  It  cannot  be.  Heaven  must  be 
self-sacrifice  made  perfect;  ceasing  to  be  sacrifice,  only 
because  complete. 

Therefore  must  Christ  have  been  a  man  of  sorrows ; 
therefore  must  He  have  borne  our  sins  and  carried  our 
sorrows,  and  taken  on  Himself  the  chastisement  of  our 
peace.  He  had  to  show  us  God,  to  make  us  see  what  He 
is,  to  make  known  life  to  death  by  life  in  death.  In  that 
which  we  call  sorrow  and  humiliation  and  sore  distress, 
all  things  borne  and  sacrificed  for  all,  God  is  seen,  and 
only  can  be  seen  by  us,  while  we  are  as  we  are,  and  love 
brings  pain  with  it.  Heaven  is,  to  be  and  do  what  Christ 
was  and  did,  and  find  no  pain  in  it,  because  no  more  is 
there  in  us  anything  that  is  opposed  to  love. 


m 

I 

1 


II " 


CHAPTER    VI. 

OP   THE   RELIGION    OF   NATUEE. 

The  kingliest  King  was  crowned  with  thorns. 

Heaven  is  happiness,  the  deliverance  of  man  from  all  that 
makes  him  subject  to  sorrow  ;  but  not,  therefore,  can  it  be 
sought  as  happiness,  for  happiness  is  in  the  leaving  off 
that  search.  There  is  no  happiness  like  that  of  love,  but 
it  cannot  be  obtained  by  seeking.  Love  must  be  given  us, 
must  carry  us  away,  must  become  our  nature  and  our  life. 
That  which  makes  the  happiness  is  gone  when  happiness  is 
sought.  Is  the  love  of  God  less  sacred  than  that  of  wife 
or  friend  ?  Can  He  accept  a  love  which  friend  or  wife 
would  repudiate  with  disdain  ?  We  are  compelled  to  love 
Him  ;  that  is  the  overmastering  passion  of  our  souls,  the 
joy  of  our  hearts,  our  life,  and  breath.  Such  passion  we 
have  felt  faint  traces  of  before,  when  most  of  lovliness  has 
moved  our  souls  to  ecstasy,  and  bowed  our  hearts  to 
worship.  When  we  could  not  contain  ourselves  for  joy, 
and  earth  was  glorified  by  one  presence  everywhere,  then 
was  revealed  to  us  the  image  and  the  shadow  of  the  love 
of  God.  We  love  Him  ;  it  is  the  one  fact  of  our  life 
which  flows  into  all  things.  To  love  Him  is  but  to  know 
Him,  but  to  awake  from  sleep,  to  have  sight  given  to  our 
eyes,  life  to  our  hearts.  One  presence  glorifies  all  the 
Avorld,  for  all  things  are  the  presence  of  Him  we  love. 
All  passions  in  this  passion  receive  their  fulfilment,  reveal 

[■233] 


234 


OP  THE  RELIGION  OF  NATURE. 


[B.  III. 


their  true  meaning,  become  absorbed,  and  die  into  life. 
All  human  passions  mean  the  love  of  God,  but  men  know 
It  not.  They  clasp  in  ignorance  that  which  fades  and 
passes  and  is  not,  not  knowing  the  eternal  joy  for  which 
their  souls  cry  out. 

How  should  love  be  spoken  or  explained  ?    We  love 
and  are  happy.     We  do  not  want,  we  do  not  pursue.    We 
want  to  be,  to  do,  that  which  He  wills  and  does.     We 
want  to  give,  to  bear,  to  sacrifice  ourselves.     We  love  the 
Infinite,  the  Eternal,  Him  in  whom,  and  for  whom,  and  to 
whom  are  all  things,  whose  will  is  done  in  heaven  and 
earth.     His  will  is  our  will ;  we  have  nothing  to  get ; 
we  love  Him.    For  He  is  the  Redeemer  :  He  takes  away 
our  iniquities,  delivers  us  from  sin,  and  will  make  us  per- 
fect and  unblamable.      He  takes  away  the  sins  of  the 
whole  world,  and  will  be  death's  destroyer.    The  Van- 
quisher of  evil  by  good,  who  shows  us  what  it  is  to  love  ; 
how  should  we  not  love  Him?    How  should  we  cease  to 
rejoice  and  to  be  glad  in  Him  ?    The  joy  flows  too  full,  it 
overflows  and  carries  us  away. 

It  is  difficult  to  love  God  because  we  do  not  see  that  He 
saves  the  world  ;  and  tliis  we  do  not  see  because  we  make 
the  New  Testament  express  our  own  natural  conceptions, 
instead  of  suffering  it  to  speak  its  own  language.  It  is 
saying  truly  that  this  is  man's  death,  but  we  are  thinking 
falsely  that  it  is  his  life ;  and  interpreting  its  words  ac- 
cording to  our  conceptions,  we  find  in  them  a  confirmation 
of  man's  thought  of  the  world,  instead  of  a  deliverance 
from  it.  We  make  it  even  below  ourselves,  and  cannot 
escape  from  the  feeling  that  we  could  conceive  a  better 
history  for  man  than  God  in  his  sovereignty  has  ordained. 
It  is  this  cruslies  our  affections,  paralyses  our  hearts,  makes 
our  piety  so  lifeless.  God's  redemption  is  the  making  man 
alive  ;  the  making  all  men  perfect  in  self-sacrifice,  uniting 


c.  vi.J 


OF  THE   RELIGION    OF  NATURE. 


235 


them  to  Himself :  not  some  men  saved  from  future  misery, 
but  all  delivered  from  this  eternal  death.  Of  the  true 
death,  the  true  damnation,  He  is  speaking,  and  of  the  true 
life,  while  we  are  thinking  of  that  which  seems  to  us,  of 
that  which  we  like  or  dread.  We  think  Christ  came  to 
give  us  that  which  we  most  wish  for,  happiness ;  to  save 
us  from  suffering,  which  we  most  fear  ;  but  he  came  to  give 
us  a  better  gift,  to  save  us  from  a  worse  evil.  He  came  to 
give  us  life,  that  we  might  feel  the  true  good ;  light,  that 
we  may  see  the  true  evil ;  to  cure  us,  that  our  desires  may 
be  different.  Christ  is  the  physician  :  He  heals  the  sick 
humanity,  allays  the  burning  fever  in  its  veins,  calms  its 
delirious  passion,  dispels  its  dreams,  soothes  its  mad  appe- 
tites, satisfies  its  wants,  restores  it  whole  and  in  its  right 
mind  to  God.  He  gives  us  life.  With  Him  we  are  raised 
up  from  the  dead. 

Our  natural  conceptions  are  of  no  weight,  because  man 
is  wanting.  We  are  no  standard  :  it  is  we  that  have  to 
be  altered,  a  different  existence  is  to  be  made  ours. 
Never  should  we  use  the  words  which  say  that  man  was 
made  in  God's  image,  without  remembering  that  the  same 
words  affirm  that  man  is  not  as  God  made  him.  We  look 
in  vain  for  God's  image  in  ourselves.  That  is  to  seek  the 
living  among  the  dead.  Not  in  our  powers,  our  arbitrary 
will,  our  reach  of  thought,  our  dignity  of  virtue,  not  in  any 
of  these  things  is  God's  likeness  to  be  found.  Show  us 
thy  glory,  0  God,  that  we  may  see  Thee.  Come  forth 
from  the  clouds  and  darkness  that  are  about  thy  throne, 
that  the  resplendent  light  may  scatter  all  the  shade.  We 
will  gird  up  our  hearts  to  bear  the  terror,  our  shuddering 
souls  shall  face  the  awful  splendor.  Let  the  majesty  of  thy 
power  be  seen,  though  it  crush  us  and  we- die. 

God  doth  reveal  Himself :— a  Man  hanged  on  a  gallows. 
It  is  too  much,  0  God  !    Art  thou  so  mucli  above  us  ;  are 


236 


OF  THE  RELIGION   OF  NATURE. 


[B.  III. 


C.  VI] 


OF  THE  RELIGION  OF  NATURE. 


237 


we  so  unlike  tliee?  is  this  the  power  whereby  thou  art 
able  to  subdue  all  things  to  thyself;  all  power  in  heaven 
and  earth  given  unto  love  ?  6  foolish  heart  to  tremble 
and  be  afraid  of  God  !  0  idle  sense  to  heap  up  images  of 
vastness  !  0  proud  and  evil  thought  that  God  was  like 
us,  only  more.  Well  might  vague  terrors  haunt  our  souls, 
and  secret  dread,  and  enmity,  and  wish  to  hide,  for  we 
thought  God  was  like  ourselves.  Unlike  us  most  of  all  in 
this,  and  while  we  turn  away  from  our  own  image,  erected 
to  us  for  the  God  we  do  not  know.  He  seeks  us,  loves  us, 
will  not  let  us  go  ;  will  make  us  know  Him,  will  make  us 
friends.     For  to  know  Him  is  to  love. 

We  cannot  see  God  as  He  is,  for  we  see  ourselves 
instead.     We  cannot  see  Him  in  nature,  for  we  put  our 
own  deadness  into  it.     We  draw  our  thought  of  God  not 
from  that  which  is,  but  from  that  which  we  feel  to  be,  and 
make  him  a  self-seeker  like  ourselves.     God  is  not  to  be 
seen  in  nature,  as  we  see  it.    The  fact  would  teach  us  God, 
but  the  phenomenon  will  not.     He  is  such  as  the  true 
being  of  nature  would  show  Him  ;  not  such  as  we  infer 
from  nature  as  we  feel  it.     We  do  not  see  love  in  nature  ; 
we  persuade  ourselves  we  do,  and  so  make  our  dim  vision 
dimmer  still.     The  love  we  fancy  there  is  such  love  as 
ours.     Not  even  such.     Nothing  can  more  pervert  the 
religious  sense  than  calling  what  we  see  in  nature  the  love 
of  God  :  this  ruling  providence,  this  exercising  of  power, 
this  giving  enjoyment,  even  if  it  were  much  more  perfect 
than  it  is.     This  is  man's  love  ;  this  is  our  way  of  loving, 
as  far  as  the  earth  is  beneath  the  heavens  from  any  that 
can  be  called  divine.     There  is  no  sacrifice  in  it.     'Tis 
like  a  rich  man  who,  happy  and  comfortable  himself, 
takes  pleasure  in  making  his  dependents  so  ;  keeps  good 
order,  protects  virtue,  and  does,  without  trouble,  every- 


J 


thing  benevolent.  It  corrupts  the  heart  to  think  of  God's 
love  so.  If  we  would  truly  see  God's  love,  we  must  seek  it 
where  Christ  sought  it,  in  sorrow,  and  sin,  and  agony  ;  in 
that  which  is  wretchedest  and  vilest.  Not  in  the  beauty 
and  delight  of  earth,  which  cost  Him  nothing,  but  in 
darkest  woe  and  fearfulest  despair.  God's  love  is  seen  in 
sacrifice.  When  we  can  look  on  nature  thus,  seeing  in  all 
that  is  saddest  and  most  evil  the  fact  of  perfect  and 
intensest  love  ;  life  given  for  the  dead  ;  when  we  can 
interpret  nature  by  the  cross  of  Christ,  then  we  see  God  in 
it ;  but  not  till  then. 

We  cannot  express  it,  God  forbid  !  That  were  not  love 
enough  ;  how  could  that  be  infinite  which  man  could  say  ? 
and  what  need  to  say  it,  what  scope  for  words,  what  place 
for  idle  breath  to  draw  faint  images  ?  The  fact  unutter- 
able, inconceivable,  is  here.  In  death  endured  for  man, 
God's  own  heart  wrung  with  human  agony  and  bowed  to 
willing  shame,  there  and  there  only  can  we  see  the  love 
of  God.  So  He  loves.  Let  as  not  profane  that  holy 
word,  the  love  of  God,  which,  seen  even  so,  is  but  darkly 
seen,  as  man's  fainting  eye  can  bear  ;  not  the  true  bright- 
ness of  that  glory,  but  the  image  veiled  and  softened  for 
our  sight ;  let  us  not  profane  that  word  to  aught  less 
worthy.  Till  we  can  see  nature  as  one  with  this,  we  do 
not  see  it ;  we  search  in  vain  in  it  for  God.  *  Behold  I 
go  forward,  but  He  is  not  there  ;  and  backward,  but  I 
cannot  perceive  Him  ;  on  the  left  hand  where  He  doth 
work,  but  I  cannot  behold  Him  ;  He  hideth  Himself  on  the 
right  hand,  that  I  cannot  see.' 

The  secret  of  the  universe  is  learnt  on  Calvary.  In  that 
death  the  life  of  nature  is  revealed.  For  it  is  love,  perfect 
and  utter  sacrifice  ;  it  is  the  life  that  shall  be  ours  when 
man  is  made  alive.  Then  deadness  shall  no  more  be  felt 
around  ;  love  shall  know  love,  and  life  within  shall  answer 
to  the  life  without. 


a  VII.] 


OF  FREEWILL. 


239 


CHAPTER    VII. 


OF   FREEWILL. 


Love  is  the  visible  form  of  freedom. 


There  is  nothing  of  which  men  are  more  conscious  than  of 
their  failure  to  solve  questions  which  are  of  the  greatest 
interest  to  them,  a  solution  of  which  would  be  received  as 
an  invaluable  boon,  not  only  for  theory  but  for  practice. 
There  is  no  necessity  of  their  condition  to  which  they  sub- 
mit more  reluctantly,  than  to  this  enforced  acceptance  of 
that  which  they  cannot  understand.  It  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  no  thinking  man  is  satisfied  ;  the  cherished 
expectation  of  knowing  more  fully  in  a  future  world  suffi- 
ciently proves  the  feeling  of  loss  and  want,  which  the 
acquiescence  in  mysteries  does  but  disguise. 

It  were  an  infinite  joy  if  the  mystery  could  be  taken 
away  from  our  life,  and  we  could  know  the  true  answers 
to  those  earnest  questionings,  which  men  from  earliest  to 
latest  times  have  addressed  to  themselves  and  to  all  things 
around  them.  No  heart  would  not  beat  high  at  the  pros- 
pect, would  not  purchase  it  at  any  sacrifice.  The  promise 
rouses  now  indeed  but  a  feeble  interest :  for  faith  has 
grown  weary,  and  disappointment  by  long  use  passes  for 
success.  We  gild  the  chains  upon  our  hands  ;  almost  we 
have  persuaded  ourselves  that  they  bespeak  no  slavery. 
But  the  true  heart  is  not  deceived.    The  fettered  limbs 

(238) 


are  motionless,  that  the  galling  be  not  felt :  the  frantic 
struggles  to  break  free  have  given  place  to  calm  :  but  it  is 
the  calmness  of  despair,  that  mocks  itself  with  laughter, 
and  hides  its  writhing  agonies  with  boastful  words.  It  is 
despair  ;  that  mimics  trust,  that  compels  itself  to  resigna- 
tion, that  smiles  the  bitter  smile  of  scorn,  that  despises, 
disbelieves,  or  believes  because  it  will  believe,  while  the 
cruel  doubt  within,  the  cruel  sin  without,  torture  the  faith 
they  cannot  slay.  Despair— intensest,  bitterest  despair — 
drives  its  pale  victims  in  the  path  of  pleasure,  pursues 
their  steps  with  madness  of  desire,  gives  them  no  rest  day 
or  night,  seeking  happiness  for  ever.  Despair  proclaims 
its  gospel :  take  care  of  yourself,  obtain  happiness,  flee  from 
pain,  ask  no  questions  about  the  world,  but  secure  your 
own  well-being. 

How  can  this  be  the  life  of  man  ?  how  can  his  life  be  in 
getting  ?  when  the  true  life,  that  which  he  wants,  is  the 
opposite  of  getting,  is  in  self-giving  only.  How  can  the 
remedy  for  human  ills  be  in  the  persuasion  that  we  cannot 
know  ?  Life  is  to  know  ;  death  broods  over  us  in  his 
unnatural  calm,  this  falsely  called  content.  Doubt  about 
God,  doubt  for  man,  doubt  of  absolute  right,  of  the  perfect- 
ness  of  love ;  the  dread  that  there  is  something  which  is 
opposed  to  these,  which  no  light  could  make  clear,  no  bet- 
ter knowledge  reconcile ;  these  are  the  things  which  eat 
into  our  hearts,  and  leave  us  no  alternative  but  reckless 
strife  or  deadly  apathy.  Not  doubts  that  we  would  express 
in  words,  doubts  that  we  crush  like  sins,  and  deny,  and 
prove  that  they  ought  not  to  be  ;  but  doubts  that  are 
the  worse  for  being  crushed,  the  blacker  that  we  will  not 
face  them,  which  poison  the  very  springs  of  piety  and 
make  it  false  even  of  love  to  say,  *  She  seeketh  not  her 
own.' 

All  comes  from  measuring  God's  work  by  ourselves, 


240 


OF  FHEEVVILL. 


[B.  III. 


C.  VII.] 


OF  FREEWILL. 


24X 


taking  our  feeling  as  the  standard  of  that  which  is.    There 
is  no  more  doubt  if  we  will  verily  believe  that  we  are  de- 
ceived.   The  secret  of  man's  perplexity  is,  that  lie  believes 
himself.     Feeling  himself  free,  lie  affirms  his  freedom,  as- 
serts his  life  ;  but  Christ's  words  affirm  that  he  is  free  only 
when  God  makes  him  so,  dwelling  in  him  and  giving  him 
a  life  he  had  not.     We  have  mistaken  freewill  for  freedom. 
The  deception  we  have  been  under,  its  source  and  neces- 
sity, the  whole  history  of  thought  on  the  subject  of  freewill, 
are  transparent,  when  we  recognise  the  central  fact  of  hu- 
man history,  that  man  wants  life.     True  freedom  belongs 
to  manhood ;  the  freewill  of  which  we  are  conscious  belongs 
to  death.     Freewill  is  not  denied  in  denying  man's  fre'e- 
dom  ;  but  freedom  is  asserted  to  be  a  different  thing.    God 
is  free,  to  whom  sin  is  impossible.     Man  is  free  when  sin  is 
impossible  to  him. 

For  if  our  conception  of  freewill  be  analysed,  it  will  be 
found  in  itself  to  indicate,  and  correspond*  to,  a  state  of 
defect ;  the  essence  of  it  is,  that  the  action  should  be  not 
necessary.    It  is  not  necessary  to  man  to  do  right.    It  is 
worthy  of  remark  that  the  ideas  of  Tightness,  or  holiness, 
and  of  wrong,  are  differently  related  to  necessity.    For 
while  necessity  excludes  sin  ;  and  an  action  which  is  neces- 
sitated loses  the  character  on  account  of  which  we  can 
attribute  criminality  to  it,  the  case  is  not  the  same  with 
holiness.     We  cannot  think  so  without  blasphemy.     The 
highest  holiness  is  necessary  holiness.    Necessity  is  want- 
ing in  respect  to  man.     He  is  not  therefore  free,  but  he  is 
conscious  of  freewill.     He  is  under  law,  and  justlv  amen- 
able to  reward  and  punishment.     When  he  is  freed  from 
this  state  of  defect,  necessity  will  no  more  be  wanting  to 
his  action.    He  will  be  holy  even  as  God  is  holy  ;  no  lon'^ger 
liable  to  sin  ;  free,  and  controllable  by  punishment  or  re- 
ward no  mofe. 


Reward  and  punishment  may  be  regarded  as  serving 
to  supply  the  defect  of  necessity  in  the  being  to  which 
they  are  applied.     They  have  evidently  this   tendency, 
though  but  imperfectly.     They  tend  to  insure  that  right- 
ness  of  action  which  otherwise  might  be  wanting.     Tech- 
nically speaking,  freewill,  and  all  that  belong  to  it,  is  a 
result  of  '  negation.'    Man  differs  from  God  in  being  not 
free ;  or  by  absence  of  that  which  in  the  Divine  nature 
makes  holiness  necessary.    Whatever  it  be,  that  is  not  in 
man ;  and  man's  characteristic  of  possible  doing  either 
right  or  wrong  evidently  depends  upon  that  absence,  is 
wholly  accounted  for  by  it,  and  needs  no  other  supposition. 
Surely  God  is  truly  the  Free.     He  must  be  taken  as  the 
type  of  freedom.    In  what  respects  we  differ  from  Him,  so 
far  do  we  depart  from  the  true  perfectness  of  freedom. 
And  in  this  especially  we  are  unlike  God,  that  it  is  pos- 
sible to  us  to  do  wrong. 

What  makes  a  difficulty  here  is,  that  we  do  not  feel  as 
if  our  freewill,  our  arbitrary  power  of  doing  or  not  doing, 
depended  on  a  defect.  To  us  it  seems  a  great  capacity,  the 
prerogative  by  possession  of  which  we  are  exalted  above 
all  the  world.  But  should  it  be  so  hard  to  us  to  under- 
stand that  we  put  darkness  for  light,  and  light  for  dark- 
ness ?  We  pride  ourselves  on  arbitrariness,  which  God 
puts  far  away  from  Him,  which  freedom  knows  but  as  her 
direst  foe.     Our  own  words  reprove  us. 

We  labor  under  a  confusion  which  has  its  source  in  the 
belief  that  the  world  is  as  it  appears.  We  feel  that  we  are 
free  as  compared  with  the  inert  things  around  us.  This  is 
true.  These  things  are  subject  to  an  inert  necessity  ;  man 
feels  himself  not  to  be  so.  And  he  dares  not  allow  himself 
to  be  not  free,  for  fear  of  reducing  himself  to  the  level  of 
those  things.  But  this  perplexity  is  removed  when  it  is 
remembered  that  these  things  are  but  phenomena :  that 
11 


242 


OF  FREEWILL. 


[B.  IlL 


there  is  no  inert  necessity,  nor  can  be,  that  it  can  only  ap- 
pear. In  maintaining  his  freedom  man  denies  liis  subjec- 
tion to  tlie  phenomenal  or  inert  necessity,  to  which  he  is 
conscious  that  he  is  not  subject ;  but  he  overlooks  his  want 
of  the  true  not-inert  necessity.  The- inertness  in  that  which 
man  perceives,  and  the  arbitrariness  in  himself,  are  correla- 
tive ;  two  forms  of  the  same  negation  or  defect.  Nature  is 
free,  man  is  not  free,  therefore  he  feels  himself  arbitrary, 
and  nature  bound  in  fate.  Nature's  holiness  to  him  is  in- 
ertness. 

With  respect  to  the  attempts  which  have  been  made  to 
bring  man's  actions  into  one  category  with  physical  phenom- 
ena, and  prove  him  subject  to  an  inert  necessity  (whether 
metaphysical,  by  logical  arguments,  or  inductive,  by  accu- 
mulation of  statistics),  one  remark  may  suffice.  Whatever 
the  force  or  value  of  these  proofs  may  be,  they  are  evidently 
incomplete.  The  theory  does  not  fulfil  the  conditions  of  a 
theory,  for  it  does  not  account  for  the  phenomena.  It  is 
true  that  consciousness  is  not  authorative,  but  it  demands  to 
be  accounted  for.  This  is  a  claim  that  cannot  be  foregone. 
Any  theory  of  man's  action,  that  can  pretend  to  correct- 
ness, must  show  why  our  consciousness  should  be  such  as 
it  is.  If  man  be  the  subject  of  an  inert  necessity,  as  phe- 
nomena are,  why  does  he  feel  as  if  he  were  not  ? 

It  accounts  for  all,  and  answers  all  demands,  to  recog- 
nise man's  deadness  and  his  presence  in  a  living  world. 
Life  and  freedom  are  one.  What  man  recognises  in  his 
feeling  of  freewill  is  a  difference  between  himself  and 
nature.  He  is  not  deceived  in  this  ;  he  errs  only  in  inter- 
preting his  consciousness  into  proof  of  his  freedom.  By 
his  deadness  it  is  that  nature  is  to  him  inert ;  that  the  ne- 
cessity in  it  appears  to  exclude  action.  For  truly  action 
and  necessity  are  one.  What  man  calls  his  freedom,  that 
very  thing  is  his  bondage.    His  self-action  is  inaction.   For 


c.  VII.] 


OF  FREEWILL. 


243 


what  is  sin  but  the  absence  of  the  true  action  of  the  man, 
when  he  is  swayed  by  passion,  led  captive  passively  ?  In 
sin  there  is  action  which  is  perverted  and  evil,  because  the 
man's  action  is  wanting  in  it.  All  nature's  part  was  per- 
fect, but  there  was  a  demand  for  human  action,  and  it  was 
wanting.*  Is  it  not  wonderful  that  piety  compels  us  to 
take  all  evil  action  to  ourselves,  and  to  say  of  all  good 
that  it  comes  from  God,  that  it  is  God's  work  in  us  and 
not  our  own  ?  Those  words  are  true.  Only  when  God 
acts  in  him  is  man  truly  free. 

That  is  true  freedom  in  which  the  action  is  the  Being's 
own,  wholly  determined  from  within.  Such  action  is  one 
and  invariable,  is  necessary  ;  the  Being  does  not  change, 
nor,  therefore,  the  action.  True  freedom  involves  holiness. 
Action  that  is  variable,  that  may  be  either  right  or  wrong, 
is  dependent  upon  circumstances  ;  it  is  the  inaction,  not  the 
true  action  of  the  Being.  This  arbitrary  action  is  emphati- 
cally not  freedom.  True  action,  true  freedom,  true  neces- 
sity, true  holiness,  all  are  one.  Necessity  and  freedom  are 
one  in  love.  True  life  or  being,  and  love  cannot  be  sepa- 
rated.   It  is  not  a  mere  figure  of  speech  that  God  is  Love. 

Thus  the  idea  of  responsibility  takes  its  right  place. 
Doubtless  man  is  responsible  ;  in  that  way  his  want  of  life 
expresses  itself.  By  absence  of  the  life  which  constitutes 
the  true  necessity,  arises  that  want  of  necessity  which 
places  under  law,  and  gives  rise  to  duty.  Law  is  from  the 
absence  of  love.  When  that  which  fulfils  it  is  not  present, 
then  law  is  felt.  There  is  then,  and  then  only,  that  which 
is  *  due,'  because  it  is  not  rendered  ;  that  which  is  '  owed,' 
because  not  freely  paid.  The  law  is  holy,  just,  and  good, 
for  it  expresses  love  j  but  love  in  relation  to  the  not-loving. 


*  '  I  dare  do  all  that  may  become  a  man  ; 
Who  dares  do  more  is  none.' 


244 


OF   FREEWILL. 


[B.  III. 


It  is  not  a  condition  of  the  perfect  life  ;  it  is  the  form  of 
lore  where  the  fact  is  not.    Not  the  relation  in  which  the 
living  stand  to  the  living  God,  but  a  relation  from  which 
God  redeems  by  giving  life  to  the  dead.     Law  is  latent, 
as  it  were,  in  love,  like  an  inscription  in  a  fountain,  to  be 
read  only  when  the  stream  is  dry.    Law  fulfilled  is  de- 
stroyed and  done  away.     Love  blots  it  out :  for  it  cannot 
save ;  it  brings  sin  to  knowledge,  and  leads  to  the  Re- 
deemer.    Law   reaches   not   eternity;   it  has  necessary 
reference  to  time,  and  presupposes  fear.     Subjectness  to 
law  marks  the  difference  between  ourselves  and  nature. 
We  dream  of  laws  in  nature  ;  not  law  is  there,  but  liberty 
or  law  fulfilled.    We  are  under  law  who  boast  of  freedom, 
and  are  slaves.    For  man  and  nature  differ,  as  does  a  dis- 
honest from  an  honest  man.     Nature  will  certainly  do  the 
thing  that  ought  to  be  ;  under  whatever  variety  of  form, 
through  whatever  changes,  infallibly  that  one  thing  shall 
be :  the  form  may  change  without  limit,  the  fact  never. 
But  man  may,  or  may  not,  do  that  which  ought  to  be  ;  he 
will  do  it  if  he  likes.    Nature  wants  no  laws ;  the  love 
that  is  her  life  necessitates  her  being,  she  cannot  be  other 
than  she  is. 

A  fond  delusion  it  is  that  finds  freedom  in  our  ability  to 
sin.  Yet  a  necessary  one.  Man's  freedom  cannot  be 
given  up  but  with  his  life.  Freedom  belongs  to  man's  life, 
and  must  be  maintained  by  those  who  do  not  see  his  dead- 
ness.  But  the  denial  of  man's  freedom  imperils  nothing  if 
that  be  recognised.  To  disprove  man's  freedom  is  to  give 
the  crowning  proof  that  he  has  not  life.  This  is  the  work 
in  which  those  have  been  engaged  who  have  assailed  the 
doctrine  of  freewill.  They  have  been  proving  on  behalf 
of  Christianity  the  death  of  man  ;  laying  anew  the  founda- 
tion on  which  the  Gospel  is  erected,  which  Christian  men 
have  razed  with  pious  zeal. 


0.  VII.] 


OF  FREEWILL. 


245 


Therefore  have  there  been  the  strong  arguments  against 
man's  freedom,  which  we  have  so  resented  and  deplored. 
Therefore  have  we  been  compelled  to  say  that  freewill  was 
a  mystery  not  to  be  submitted  to  examination.      These 
things  were  to  teach  us  to  be  wiser  ;  to  wean  us  from  that 
strong  delusion  that  man  has  life.      For  the  argument 
against  freewill,  that  seeks  to  establish  in  man  an  inert 
necessity,  answers  precisely  to  idealism  ;   has  the  same 
strength  of  logic,  the  same  weakness  of  conclusion,  the 
same  inevitable  rejection  by  mankind.     Each  brings  us  to 
a  result  which  does  not  account  for  the  consciousness  it 
undertakes  to  explain  ;  but  each  also  proves  an  error  in 
our  thought,  and  contributes  its  share  to  demonstrate  that 
false  feeling  in  man  which  makes  evident  his  defect.     As 
this  life  of  man,  this  life  to  that  which  is  not  the  true 
reality,  is  not  truly  life ;  so  is  the  freewill  which  is  con- 
nected with  it,  the  freedom  relatively  to  these  things,  not 
true  freedom.     Man  is  relatively  free,  therefore  respon- 
sible ;  absolutely  not  free,  not  free  in  respect  to  the  eternal 
and  truly  real ;  therefore  to  be  redeemed  and  introduced 
into  liberty,  made  partaker  of  God's  freedom  as  of  His 
life. 


*^t 


CHAPTER    VIII. 


OF  THE  SELF. 


We  we  such  atuff  as  dreams  are  made  of. 

If  our  self-action  be  not  true  action,  what  is  our  Self?  of 
what  are  we  conscious?  We  are  conscious  of  defect- 
man's  consciousness  of  self  is  the  feeling  of  his  want  of 
being. 

There  is  in  this  conception  nothing  abstruse,  or  remote 
from  our  ordinary  modes  of  thought.  It  is  as  familiar  to 
us  to  be  conscious  of  defect,  as  of  the  contrary.  When  we 
are  conscious  of  cold,  for  example,  we  are  conscious  of 
defect  of  heat.  There  is  a  certain  heat  natural  to  the 
human  body,  defect  of  which  we  are  conscious  of  as  cold  ; 
or  in  many  other  respects  we  may  have  consciousness  of 
defect ;  of  weakness  for  example,  or  of  the  loss  of  a  mem- 
ber, or  a  sense.  So  we  might  equally  be  conscious  of 
defect  of  being—  of  want  of  the  true  being  of  man  with- 
in  us. 

Man  is  defective.  This  we  know.  The  perfection  of 
man  has  never  been  maintained  by  any.  Therefore,  being 
conscious,  man  should  be  conscious  of  being  defective  • 
conscious,  therefore,  of  defective  being,  and  of  defect  of 
being.  To  be  true  man's  consciousness  must  contain  this 
element  of  defect.  And  can  it  be  doubtful  that  it  is  this 
element  of  his  consciousness  to  which  the  name  of  Self 

[246] 


c.  vm.] 


OF  THE  SELF. 


247 


has  been  assigned  ?  Is  it  not  an  emptiness,  that  we  are 
conscious  of  within,  and  call  it  Self?*  If  it  be  asked,  what 
then  is  conscious  of  self,  if  the  self  be  defect  ?  it  may  be 
answered  :  man  is  conscious  of  it.  Man  is  conscious  of 
defect  of  being.  We  constantly  distinguish,  in  our  lan- 
guage, between  the  man  and  the  self.  We  say :  I  hate 
myself,  despise  myself.  We  are  deeply  conscious  that  the 
self  is  not  the  true  manhood,  though  obscurely,  not  having 
distinctly  made  the  question  a  subject  of  thought. 

*  There  is  the  Self.'  True  :  even  as  there  is  a  shadow. 
Why  should  we  not  as  well  be  conscious  of  defect  of  being, 
as  perceive  defect  of  light  ?  Only  by  experience  and  long 
inquiry  does  man  arrive  at  the  knowledge  that  a  shadow 
is  a  negation,  and  understand  that  the  effects  produced  by 
shadows  are  due  only  to  want  of  light.  He  perceives 
shadows  as  things.  Always  the  absence  of  anything  is 
felt  as  an  existence  by  us,  while  we  do  not  recognise  that 
of  which  it  is  the  absence.  Nay  more,  even  to  our  in- 
structed eyes  a  shadow  will  often  appear  to  be  the  sub- 
stantial portion  of  an  object ;  and  the  important  part 
which  a  mere  negation  may  play  in  our  experience,  may 
be  understood  the  better  by  a  reference  to  the  painter's 
art ;  for  drawing  is  little  more  than  a  correct  use  of 
shadows. 

We  are  conscious  of  our  self  as  acting ;  we  recognise 
actions  of  the  self.  Truly  :  but  we  also  recognise  the  ac- 
tion of  cold ;  yet  we  admit  that  cold  is  but  absence  of 
heat,  that  the  *  actions  of  cold'  are  the  eflfects  of  a  nega- 
tion. Does  not  our  experience  teach  us  that  the  actions 
of  the  self  are  the  effects  of  want  of  action  in  man  ?  Is  it 
not  thus  that  self-will  is  slavery  ? 


*  The  unconscious  suggestions  of  language  are  very  striking.    We  speak 
of  *  self-consciousness,'  familiarly,  as  a  defect  in  a  person's  character. 


248 


OP  THE  SELF. 


[B.  UI. 


It  Should  be  remembered,  however,  that  to  affirm  the 
.  sell,  of  which  man  is  now  conscious,  to  be  defect,  is  not  to 
repudiate  individuality.  Individuality  does  not  depend 
upon  the  self.  There  is  in  us  an  emptiness  where  there 
should  be  a  fulness,  individual  defect  instead  of  individual 
being.  May  we  not  look  forward  to  the  true  individuality 
ol  man  m  the  bestowment  on  him  of  a  truer  life  '* 

Recognising  in  the  self,  of  which  we  are  conscious,  de- 
fect of  being,  a  light  diffuses  itself  over  all  our  experience  • 
the  whole  thought  of  man  and  of  the  world  becomes  trans- 
parent    There  is  a  defect  in  us  which  we  apply,  as  it 
were  to  all  things.    In  all  things,  as  they  are  to  us,  our 
self  ha^  left  Its  mark,  defect  is  introduced,  the  being  is 
banished     Remembering  this,  it  is  no  longer  a  mystery 
that  we  have  been  so  perplexed  and  baffled.    So  must  we 
have  arrived  at  a  knowledge  of  the  truth.    To  say  that 
the  things  that  are  real  to  us  are  not  the  true  realities,  is 
but  another  way  of  saying  that  our  self  is  not  truly  being. 
Thus  too  we  see  why,  in  our  inquiry  respecting  nature,  we 
must  inquire  also  into  ourselves.    How  should  that  which 
a  defect^e  being  feels,  fail  to  indicate  his  defect?    Must 
It  not  differ  by  defect  from  that  which  is  ? 

If  this  self  be  defect  of  being,  then  must  all  true  good, 
all  life  to  man,  be  in  self-sacrifice.  In  the  utter  destruc- 
tion and  casting  out  of  this  self,  the  doing  away  of  the 
defec,  man's  life  is  given  him ;  there  can  be  no  other 
true  life  for  man.  And  when  man  truly  sacrifices  self,  it 
IS  God  s  act  in  him.    Prom  the  self  comes  no  goodness,  it 


"We  may  either  say  that  the  sel?  .^  such,  «  defect  of  being,  or  that  the 
self  w«  are  conscoua  of  ia  not  the  true,  right  self;  which  is  •  being.'  Whirh 


C.  VIIlJ 


OF  THE  SELF. 


249 


ill 


must  be  made  new.  Self-righteousness  is  not  righteous- 
ness ;  only  when  our  self  is  filled,  our  emptiness  destroyed, 
by  God  in  us,  then  does  man  live  and  act.  That  is  the 
true  humanity.  That  also  is  man's  true  freedom.  Sin, 
as  the  assertion  of  the  self,  is  the  bondage,  the  death  of 
man. 

Thinking  of  our  self  as  *  being,'  taking  the  self-view,  we 
are  lost  in  darkness  ;  but  the  right  knowledge  of  our  self 
enables  us  to  reconcile  almost  all  contradictions.  We 
enter  into  the  mystery  of  man's  condition  :  that  he  is  so 
glorious,  yet  so  mean,  so  elevated,  yet  so  ignoble,  has  such 
capacities,  yet  effects  such  unworthy  results,  is  the  one 
thing  which  seems  to  come  short  of  its  destiny.  The  true 
being  of  man  is  not  in  this  that  we  call  his  being.  Hu- 
manity looks  towards,  and  demands  a  different  being  from 
this.  This  self  is  not  man  ;  it  must  be  destroyed  and 
taken  away  before  the  true  man  can  be.  There  is  de- 
manded, in  respect  to  man,  an  existence  that  is  not  yet ; 
his  nature,  his  feelings,  his  consciousness  are  attuned  to  a 
different  being.  He  is  conscious  of  defect ;  conscious  of 
it,  because  it  is  to  be  supplied.  For  thus  the  statements 
of  the  New  Testament  are  felt  to  be  self-evidently  true,  in 
proclaiming  man's  salvation  ;  that  this  defect  and  death 
of  man  shall  be  done  away  ;  God  shall  be  all  in  all.  It 
must  be  so.  How  should  man  be  conscious  of  defect, 
except  that  he  is  to  be  delivered  from  it  ?  What  is  it  to 
be  conscious  of  defect,  but  to  have  an  aspect  towards  a 
truer  being,  a  relation  to  a  state  of  freedom  from  defect  ? 
So  the  true  relations  of  sin  are  seen  ;  it  arises  from  the 
self,  and  exists  for  its  destruction.  For  human  experience 
is  the  destruction  of  the  self,  the  doing  away  of  the  defect 
in  man,  the  making  him  alive.  Because  it  is  being  destroyed, 
the  self  runs  into  such  excess,  such  madness.  Driven  by 
fiends,  burnt  up  by  torturing  fire,  it  writhes  and  struggles 
11* 


250 


OF  THE  SELF. 


[B.  in. 


in  its  death  agony,  grasping  at  every  pleasure  for  short- 
lived relief,  rushing  into  insanest  riotings,  consuming  itself 
with  known  and  deliberate  pangs,  because  ungovernable 
cravings  gnaw  its  heart.     Around  it  sweep  the  everlasting 
flames,  the  wrath  of  God  filled  up,  and  sparing  not.*    For 
in  sober  and  literal  truth  this  is  hell.    The  self  makes 
hell  for  itself,  nor  can  escape,  nor  shall.    'I  will  be  thy 
plague,  0 1  death  ;  0  I  destruction,  I  will  be  thy  destroyer.' 
Sinning  is  hell,  the  burning  up  of  the  self  with  unquench- 
able fire.     That  cruel  mystery  of  sin  is  this  :  should  not 
death  be  destroyed,  should  not  man  be  made  alive  ?    Let 
the  fierce  flames  of  passion  have  their  course,  let  the  weep- 
ing, and  wailing,  and  gnashing  of  teeth  go  on,  let  all 
miseries  be  incurred,  let  all  vain  remedies  be  tried,  so  shall 
God^s  remedy  at  last  be  found  the  only  one,  so  shall  Christ 
draw  all  men  unto  him. 

For  by  life  only  can  self  be  cast  out,  only  by  self-sacri- 
fice, only  through  the  love  that  is  in  knowing  God.    Think- 
ing of  that  which  we  feel  to  be,  as  if  it  were  that  by 
which  we  must  judge  existence,  we  do   not  see  that  I 
change  in  man's  being  must  be  a  spiritual  cliange.    The 
want  of  life  whereby  he  is  in  a  world  not  spiritual  must 
be  done  away.    To  be  in  the  spiritual  worid  is  to  be 
spiritual,  to  have  life,  to  be  free  from  that  self  with  which 
we  now  are  burdened,  '  the  body  of  this  death.'    For  well 
has  It  been  observed,  that  our  consciousness  of  self  is  that 
which  determines  our  state  of  being,  and  gives  the  charac- 
ter to  our  perception.    This  self  that  we  are  conscious  of 
makes  the  world  inert  to  us.     Our  present  self-conscious- 
ness demands  as  its  correlative  and  condition,  an  inert  ex- 
istence around  us,  which  passively  obeys  our  exertion,  and 


*  '  ^d  I  «aw  another  sign  in  heaven,  seven  angels  having  the  seven  last 
plagues;  for  in  them  is  filled  up  the  wrath  of  God^  Uev.  xv.  i 


C.  VIII.] 


OF  THE  SEI^f, 


251 


til 


is  respondent  to  our  force.  Self-consciousness,  involving 
the  sense  of  exertion,  is  inseparable  from  a  feeling  of 
passiveness  in  that  on  which  we  act.  In  our  conceptions 
of  the  future  state,  the  same  element  is  necessarily  present. 
We  cannot  conceive  ofoursdves  except  as  in  a  world  thus 
passive.  However  we  may  hold  that  world  to  be  spiritual, 
though  we  may  even  say  it  is  apart  from  matter,  this 
characteristic  of  inertness  cannot  be  separated  from  our 
thought.  We  give  to  that  which  is  thus  inert,  indeed, 
emphatically  the  name  of  substance  ;  and  are  but  too  apt 
to  fancy  active  powers  inhering  in  such  a  substance,  even 
when  we  think  of  spiritual  being.  This  self  of  ours  carries 
inertness  inseparably  with  it ;  where  it  is,  inaction  must 
be  perceived.  No  stronger  proof  could  be  that  it  is  the 
negation  ;  put  it  wheresoever,  surround  it  howsoever,  a 
negation  must  be  present  to  it.  At  least  we  may  say  this  : 
inasmuch  as  the  self  that  we  are  conscious  of,  by  its  own 
nature,  involves  the  feeling  of  inertness,  therefore  our 
feeling  the  world  to  be  inert  can  be  no  evidence  that  it  is 
truly  so. 

From  this  necessity  under  which  we  lie  of  feeling  inert- 
ness around  us,  evidently  has  arisen  our  conception  of  the 
universe  as  an  inert  existence  on  the  one  hand,  peopled  by 
active  beings  on  the  other  ;  and  these  beings,  also,  we  con- 
ceive to  be  conscious  of  defect,  to  be  such  as  we  are. 

Even  God  we  have  conceived  as  such  a  self.  Scarcely 
can  we  prevent  ourselves  from  attributing  to  Him  intellect 
such  as  ours,  exertion  of  force  like  that  we  feel,  difficulties, 
contrivances,  ideas.  All  this  has  been  necessary  from  our 
taking  our  Self  as  the  standard  of  being ;  not  reflecting  that 
our  mode  of  consciousness  involves  a  consciousness  of  defect, 
and  that,  therefore,  there  must  be  a  consciousness  different 
from  ours.  This  self  constitutes  us  physical ;  to  be  not 
physical  is  to  be  free  from  self,  to  l^e  free  from  defect. 


252 


OF  THE  SELF. 


[B.  III. 


In  being  made  spiritual  man  is  made  to  be  ;  self-action,  or 
arbitrariness,  is  done  away  j  necessity  is  put  within. 

Thus  the  question  of  man's  relation  to  God,  how  he  can 
be  distinct  from  the  Divine  Being,  becomes  free  from  the 
difficulties  wiih  which  it  has  been  felt  to  be  encompassed. 
It  no  longer  even  appears  to  be  a  contradiction  to  say  tliat 
God  is  infinite,  and  yet  deny  that  man  is  divine.     Man  is 
not  divine,  because  his  self  is  defect  of  Being.     God  is  not 
in  this  humanity,  not  because  He  is  limited,  but  emphati- 
cally because  He  is  without  limits.     Of  Him  no  darkness, 
no  negation  can  be  affirmed.     The  defect  in  man,  our 
consciousness  of  a  self  that  cannot  be  divine,  has  been  truly 
the  cause  of  our  entertaining  side  by  side  in  our  minds  the 
beliefs  that  God  is  Infinite,  absolutely  without  limits,  and 
yet  that  there  is  other  existence  besides  Him.     The  direct 
direct  contradiction  between  these  propositions  is  evident, 
and  though  it  does  not  therefore  follow  that  either  ouglit 
to  be  abandoned,  yet  it  is  at  least  clear  that  there  must\c 
a  juster  and  more  adequate  way  of  regarding  the  subject, 
if  it  could  be  attained.     If  contradictions  are  sometimes 
necessary  to  us  through  our  imperfection,  they  certainly 
cannot  be  in  the  things  themselves.  Does  not  the  recognition 
of  our  self,  as  defect  of  being,  do  away  with  the  necessity 
of  maintaining  a  contradiction  in  this  case  ?     Our  self  is 
emphatically  not  God,  for  it  is  not  being.     We  had  to 
reconcile  the  feeling  that  our  self  was  not  divine  with  tlie 
false  opinion  that  our  self  was  being,  and  this  confused  us ; 
made  us  assert  a  being  not  divine,  while  yet  we  could  not 
renounce  God's  infinitude.     How  much,  not  only  philoso- 
phy, but  religion,  has  suffered  from  this  paradox,  those  well 
know  who   have  studied   the  history  of  human  thought. 
But  in  recognising  what  man's  self  is,  the  disturbing  force 
is  taken  away,  and  our  thoughts  right  themselves.    No 


C.  VIII.] 


OF  THE   SELF. 


253 


contradiction  is  here  any  more,  or  is  to  be  feared.  For  in 
asserting  that  man's  self  is  not  God,  we  do  not  contravene 
His  infiniteness,  but  assert  it.  And  the  religious  feelings 
are  relieved  almost  as  much  as  the  intellectual  sense, 
while  the  language  of  Scripture  receives  the  most  striking 
illustration.  To  be  not  divine  is  man's  death  :  what  he 
wants  is  to  have  Being  in  him,  to  be  united  to  God,  and 
apart  from  Him  no  more.  And  the  Name,  The  I  am.  The 
Jehovah,  becomes  full  of  a  new  meaning,  a  new  glory. 
God  is  The  Being.  And  not  less  do  the  words  of  the 
New  Testament  reveal  their  true  force.  Is  not  this  its 
doctrine  throughout,  that  man's  life  is,  to  partake  God's 
life ;  God  to  be  in  him  ?  We  need  only  to  give  up  the 
persuasion  that  our  self  is  Being,  ta  see  a  new  and  awful 
meaning  in  the  familar  words.  Have  we  not  warped  the 
New  Testament  to  our  thought  of  man's  life  apart  from 
God,  while  it  affirms  his  death  ? 

Man's  death  : — his  self-defect  of  being.  Surely  these  are 
the  same.  In  consciousness  of  this  self  surely  man  is  made 
conscious  of  his  death  ;  conscious  of  death,  because  he  is  to 
be  made  alive. 

Aud  our  thought  of  God  also  loses  a  great  part  of  its 
difficulty.  Ever  the  battle  is  renewed  on  one  hand  or  the 
other :  Is  God  a  Person  ?  If  not,  He  is  nothing  to  us. 
We  must  have  a  Person  for  our  God,  or  we  are  without 
hope  in  the  world.  But  the  difficulty  in  maintaining  this 
lies  in  our  taking  our  self  as  the  standard  of  personality. 
God  is  not  such  as  man  :  surely  not ;  no  such  Self  is  in 
Him.  Falsely  we  call  ourselves  persons.  We  want 
personality.  Then  first  are  we  truly  personal  when  God 
fills  us  with  Himself.  And  God  is  not  a  Person  ;  one 
among  many.  God  forbid  :  He  is  The  Person.  Then 
are  we  personal  when  we  are  divine :   when  the  over- 


254 


OF  THE  SELF. 


[B.  III. 


C.  VIIL] 


OF  THE  SELF. 


255 


mastering  Spirit  dwells  within  us  and  acts,  and  we  can 
Bay,  'I  labor,  yet  not  I.' 

What  dream  is  it  from  which  we  shrink,  of  being  ab- 
sorbed in  God  ?  as  if  to  be  one  with  God  were  loss  instead 
of  gain  ;  as  if  our  self  were  Being  that  we  should  fear  to 
lose.  To  be  divine  is  to  be  personal,  to  be  in  the  true 
sense  man.  Least  of  all  should  a  Christian  man  have 
feared  to  be  made  one  with  God,  for  what  is  shown  us  in 
Christ,  but  the  perfection  of  humanity  in  oneness  with 
God  ?  If  Christ  be  divine  and  yet  human,  why  may  not 
we  be  human  and  yet  divine  ?  The  notion  of '  absorption ' 
bears  self  upon  its  face  ;  we  think  of  God  as  physical. 

And  if  we  say,  how  then  can  God  create,  if  He  be  the 
only  Being?  would  it  not  become  us  rather  to  keep 
reverent  silence,  than  to  suppose  that  creation  must  con- 
form to  our  conceptions?  Should  we  not  rather  learn 
what  creation  is  from  facts,  than  insist  upon  a  creation 
answering  our  ideas  ?  Why  should  not  creation  depend 
upon  the  true  infinitude  and  soleness  of  God's  being? 
Why  should  we  allow  ourselves  for  a  moment  to  think  the 
contrary  ?  If,  moreover,  we  admit  creation  inconceivable, 
can  there  be  a  greater  folly  than  to  assert  what  its  mode 
must  be  ?  And  yet,  again  :  If  man  have  his  true  life  only 
when  God  dwells  and  acts  in  him,  may  we  not  be  well 
content  to  believe  the  same  of  all  His  creatures  ? 

The  applying  physical  conceptions  to  the  Divine  Being 
is  the  secret  of  the  difficulty  that  has  been  felt  here.  For 
in  truth  a  just  thought  of  the  Creative  Act  seems  not  so 
impossible  when  we  remember  that  God  is  Love.  To  our 
thought  love  must  be  self-sacrifice,  because  of  the  defect 
that  we  are  conscious  of.  Love  must  be  the  sacrifice  of 
that  which  is  in  us  :  where  death  is,  life  must  be  its  destruc- 
tion.   In  self-sacrifice,  therefore,  we  must  find  the  truest 


conception  of  creation.  Love,  sacrificing  self :  God  limit- 
ing Himself  as  it  were,  giving  up  Himself  for  the  creature's 
life ;  in  this  most  truly  may  we  present  to  ourselves  creation. 
As  Creator,  not  less  than  as  Redeemer,  is  God  revealed  to 
us  in  Christ.* 

In  denying  our  self  to  be  Being,  the  relations  of  things 
are  left  untouched.    These  things  that  *  are  to  us,'  still  are 
to  us.    Here  is  this  life  of  ours,  such  as  it  is,  it  is  not 
denied.    When  a  shadow  is  pointed  out  to  be  a  shadow,  an 
absence  and  not  an  existence,  nothing  is  changed  except  a 
false  conception  for  a  true  one.     A  reference  is  made,  in 
our  thought  and  appreciation,  to  an  existence  before  un- 
noticed or  disregarded.   To  recognise  a  shadow  is  to  know 
the  light,  to  understand  that  there  is  more  than  was  sup- 
posed, not  less.    How  glorious  that  being  must  be,  by 
defect  of  which  is  our  life  with  all  its  beauty,  joy,  and 
good ;  its  responsibilities,  affections,  and  pursuits.     Even 
this  is  not  the  very  fact  of  life,  it  is  life  mingled  with 
death  ;  good  enough  if  it  be  for  us,  it  is  not  good  enough 
for  God.    He  who  has  life  in  Himself  cannot  so  be  content 
for  any  of  His  creatures.     For  our  self-life  is  not  true  life, 
taken  even  at  its  best.     Let  us  look  into  it  and  see.     Is 
not  our  being  such  selves  as  we  are,  apart  from  any  per- 
version or  depravity,  itself  a  deception  and  wrongness? 
For  are  we  not  thus  compelled  to  feel  things  quite  out  of 
any  proportion  to  their  true  proportionate  value  ?    A  trifle 
directly  affecting  ourselves  is  felt  as  more  by  us,  is  more 


*  Theoretically,  it  seems  simple  to  say  that  creation  is  by  negation,  not 
by  addition.  From  infinite  Being,  by  infinite  variety  of  negation,  infinite 
variety  of  being ;  that  is,  of  relative,  or  creature  being.  But  such  theoretical 
statements  are  of  little  value,  except  for  the  purpose  of  excluding  worse 
ones.  They  should  never  be  demanded,  nor  valued,  even  as  approximations. 
The  intellect  can  only  deal  with  human  conceptions,  not  with  the  very  fact 
of  being. 


256 


OF  THE  SELF. 


[B.  III. 


to  US,  than  great  interests  which  do  not  implicate  our  own 
welfare.    Not  because  we  are  bad,  but  because  we  are 
*  selves.'    We  should  be  wanting  in  the  essential  properties 
of  this  state  of  humanity  if  we  did  not  feel  so.     We  have 
to  struggle  against  the  feeling ;  it  seems  as  if  we  never 
could  be  freed  from  it.    By  the  very  nature  of  our  self,  we 
feel  things  not  according  to  their  true  value.    A  less  thing 
is  more  important  to  us  than  truly  greater  ones.     We  are 
not  right  to  the  universe.  All  things  are  distorted,  twisted, 
turned  from  their  true  relations,  so  far  as  we  are  concerned, 
by  the  fact  of  our  self-ship.    Is  there  not  a  fact  here  which 
ought  not  to  be  ignored  ?    Nay,  more  ;  often  we  cannot  but 
feel  as  good  to  ourselves  the  calamities  and  evils  of  other 
men.   They  are  good  to  the  self.   And  in  wrong  doing,  what 
is  there  but  the  natural  result  of  this  warping  of  our  feelings 
by  self?    In  doing  wrong,  a  man  evidently  acts  against 
the  true  value  and  relations  of  things,  moved  by  his  wrong 
feeling  of  them.    He  violates  right  to  gratify  self.     Sin  is 
treating^  things  a?  they  are  to  the  self,  not  as  they  truly 
are.    Virtue  to  us  means  self-denial ;  yet  is  virtue  nothing 
but  acting  according  to  the  truth  of  things :  letting  the 
most  weighty  have  the  greatest  weight.    And  when  we 
consider   the   meaning   of   the   word   virtue,  that   it  is 
manhood,  and  reflect  how  it  consists  in  opposing  self, 
surely  it  should  be  clear  to  us  that  the  self  is  not  man's 

BEING. 

Self  is  our  great  enemy ;  it  deceives  us.  It  makes  us 
feel  things  to  be  good  which  are  not  good  ;  evil  which  arc 
not  evil ;  great  which  are  trivial.  If  therefore  we  should 
be  disposed  to  say,  the  self  of  which  I  am  conscious  is  my 
true  being,  or  else  I  am  deceived ;  let  us  reflect  that  by 
this  very  self  we  certainly  are  deceived,  and  made  to  feel 
things  as  they  are  not.  To  God  all  things  must  be  as  they 
truly  are,  all  felt  in  right  and  just  proportion.    He  cannot 


C.  VIII.] 


OF  THE  SELF. 


257 


be  a  self  as  we^re.    He  is  love,  and  our  self  is  not  love. 
He  is  light,  our  self  is  darkness. 

And  again,  not  understanding  that  by  self  a  defect  is 
introduced  into  our  feeling,  and  the  action  and  life  of 
nature  made  wanting  to  us,  we  have  been  compelled  to 
suppose  the  most  incredible  things  respecting  perception  ; 
that  we  put  so  much  into  nature  ;  that  it  is  to  us  so  much 
more  than  it  is  in  itself  I     Light  is  from  mere  motion  af- 
fecting our  eye,  music  from  mere  motion  affecting  our  ear  ; 
all  the  value  that  nature  has,  it  has  through  the  mysterious 
virtues  of  our  Self,  which  turns  dead  mechanical  impulses 
into  this  various  life !     Our  self  a  storehouse  of  all  sweet 
and  glorious  and  wondrous  things,  to  which  the  universe 
ministers  mere  occasion,  as  it  were,  to  be  conscious  of  its 
riches  I     What  hard  necessity  could  have  brought  men  to 
such  a  thought?    But  it  cannot  be  true.    Not  we  are  rich 
and  nature  poor  ;  not  so,  but  we  turn  out  the  life  from  that 
which  is  around  us,  and  to  our  self  there  is  no  more  the 
living  fact  of  Being,  but  inert  forces,  a  mere  dead  mechan- 
ism, which  leaves  us  utterly  amazed  to  think  how  it  can 
be  so  much  to  our  perception  and  our  hearts  ;  how  glorious 
we  must  be  to  make  so  much  out  of  so  little  I 

Let  us  protest  one  moment  against  ourselves.  Let 
rational  inquiry  be  heard  against  assurance.  What  cause 
does  our  experience  of  nature  bespeak?  What  things 
should  they  be  which  thrill  our  souls  with  rapture,  pene- 
trate our  hearts  with  such  sweet  or  solemn  thoughts,  speak 
with  such  mystic  language,  inwind  themselves  with  our 
deepest  feelings,  and  make  themselves  part  of  the  very 
fountain  of  our  life  ;  which  are  beautiful,  gentle,  living,  full 
of  truth,  of  majesty,  of  joy  or  awe,  of  comfort  or  of  warn- 
ing ;  which  are  bound  to  us  by  infinite  relations ;  which 
teach  us  solemn  lessons,  rousing  our  souls  to  ecstacy  or 


258 


OF  THE  SELF. 


[B.  III. 


anguish :  which  say  to  us,  Be  more,  be  better,  join  heart 
and  hand  with  us  ? 

Matter  and  dead  forces  ?  It  cannot  be.  The  theory  is 
self-condemned.  It  does  not  account  for,  nor  touch,  the 
most  pregnant  facts  of  the  case.  The  question  turns  itself 
the  other  way.  We  must  ask  rather  why  we  have  been 
compelled  to  make  such  an  inference ;  what  that  self  of 
ours  can  be,  that  has  forced  upon  us  such  a  thought? 

For  our  experience,  let  us  be  bold  enough  to  affirm  an 
adapted  cause  ;  a  possible  one.  Let  us  not  wantonly  make 
mysteries,  and  say  :  Nature  is  matter  and  force  ;  but  how 
it  can  affect  us  thus  passes  comprehension :  two  mysteries  ; 
first,  that  we  should  know,  without  a  full  and  reasonable 
investigation,  what  nature  is,  and  then  that  it  should  be  so 
inconceivably  unlike  all  that  its  effects  and  powers  would 
indicate  it  to  be.  For  there  is  no  man  who  has  not  felt  in 
his  heart  what  a  miserable  failure  our  investigation  of 
nature  is  ;  what  poor  and  even  ridiculous  results  we  educe. 
The  secret  of  its  being  palpably  escapes  us  :  the  things  we 
discover  cannot  be  accepted  as  the  facts.  Imaginary  ideas 
are  invented  without  end,  to  satisfy  the  necessity  of  finding, 
in  nature,  something  that  at  least  may  seem  to  make  its 
wonder  less  incredible.  When  all  that  is  needed  is  that 
we  should  bethink  ourselves,  that  that  which  is  felt  to  be 
by  us,  may  be,  nay  must  be,  other  than  that  which  is. 
Must  be  ;  for  our  self  is  in  it ;  defect,  negation,  that  which 
deprives  it  of  reality. 

For,  that  our  self  is  defect  of  being  is,  perhaps,  in  no 
respect  more  manifest  than  in  this  ;  that  to  it  the  phenome- 
nal is  the  real.  Real  to  the  self,  unreal  to  the  man. 
Man  feels  and  knows  that  to  be  unreal  which  yet  is  real  to 
him.  The  discord  of  his  life  is  here,  in  that  defect  which 
makes  him  such  a  self  as  he  is.  The  defect,  unrecognised 
to  be  defect,  clothes  all  things  with  mystery ;  surrounds 


C.  VIII.] 


OF  THE  SELF. 


259 


I 


with  ever  multiplying  doubts.  The  inert  and  transient 
world,  that  does  but  seem,  is  the  reality  to  the  self.  Hereby 
we  know  the  self :  it  is  that  to  which  the  unreal  is  the 
real.  When  we  are  freed  from  that,  the  phenomenal  shall 
be  reality  to  us  no  more.  The  eternal  fact  shall  be  our 
reality,  that  in  which  is  no  defect,  because  no  defect  shall 
be  any  more  in  us :  that  spiritual  fact,  of  which  our  ex- 
perience testifies  so  plainly,  but  which  now  we  cannot  find, 
which  disappears  when  we  seek  it,  because  of  the  blindness 
in  our  eye.  The  life  in  time  is  a  life  of  defect,  of  passion, 
of  getting,  from  the  pressure  and  torment  of  our  want. 
The  life  of  heaven,  the  life  eternal,  is  the  life  of  being,  of 
action,  of  giving  from  the  riches  of  our  having.  Slaves 
now,  rendering  a  fearful  and  reluctant  service  for  what  we 
can  obtain  :  Kings  then,  from  royal  bounty,  of  our  own 
freedom,  bestowing.  No  deadly  self,  coiled  like  a  serpent 
in  our  breast,  gnawing  at  our  hearts ;  that  we  can  see 
nothing,  heed  nothing,  do  nothing,  but  feed  forever  its 
ravenous  hunger.  Not  this  self,  the  Tyrant,  the  Destroyer. 
Destroyed  by  the  mightier  Love,  its  pale  and  wounded 
victims  shall  arise,  with  freed  hearts  and  holy  hands,  and 
join  the  universal  life.  No  more  isolated  and  apart,  in 
self-pursuit,  but  wholly  one  with  all,  rejoicing  beyond 
reach  of  sorrow,  happy  beyond  touch  of  harm,  blest  with 
God's  own  blessedness  of  absolute  surrender. 

Man  is  degraded,  low,  an  outcast ;  open  to  the  cruel 
shafts  of  sarcasm,  his  bleeding  heart  is  a  fair  mark  for  jest 
and  scoffing.  Poor  is  his  virtue  ;  a  fair  pretence,  pierced 
through  by  gaping  wounds,  betraying  the  rotten  selfish- 
ness beneath.  So  let  it  be.  Yet  stay,  0  scorner,  till  the 
true  man  be  seen.  Crushed  beneath  his  enemy,  striving 
vainly  with  a  foe  that  is  himself,  bearing  death  unknown 
within,  and  seeking  helplessly  the  secret  of  his  misery 


260 


OF  THE  SELF. 


[B.  III. 


everywhere  but  there ;  speak  not  rash  words  of  him.  Let 
death  have  reverence.  Rather,  let  Life  that  strives  with 
death  and  overcomes,  the  kindling  powers  that  shall  know 
no  quenching,  the  battling  light  and  darkness,  the  war  of 
heaven  with  hell,  receive  the  homage  of  an  awful  joy. 

For  He  is  party  to  the  strife  whose  Presence  is  accom- 
plished victory;  whom  nothing  withstands,  nothing  delays : 
who  hath  abolished  death,  and  with  His  own  blood  sealed 
man's  deliverance.    Life  has  been  given  for  life,  the  law 
of  life  has  been  fulfilled.     Christ  has  borne  our  death  ;  has 
brought  life  into  contact  with  our  self  and  shown  it' van- 
quished.   The  power  is  there,  the  work  shall  surely  be 
accomplished.    For  He  triumphs  even  now ;   earth  doth 
confess  Him  Lord.    Suffering  and  sacrifice,  shame  and  sor- 
row, by  these  He  is  known  to  be  Divine.    The  weary  ears 
of  men  listen,  and  drink  in  the  tale,  and  own  that  it  is  true. 
Sorrow  and  sacrifice,  God  taking  our  death  upon  Him, 
made  to  be  sin.  for  us,  these  bring  salvation,  they  have  a 
charm  which  cannot  fail.    The  glad  heart  bounds  to  hear 
it.    Herein  it  reads  the  secret  of  its  being.    The  mystery 
is  opened.    Heaven  is  revealed.    Now  it  knows  that  the 
self-life  is  death.    It  knows  God,  and  lives. 


BOOK    IV 


OF   ETHICS. 


Hk  trusted  in  God. 


[261] 


•  > 


CHAPTER   I. 


OF  THE  PACT  OP  HUMAN  LIPB. 


As  seeing  that  which  is  invisible. 

The  views  which  have  been  suggested  have  an  evident 
bearing  on  the  regulation  of  our  life.     Our  action  should 
correspond  to  reality  and  not  to  a  false  impression.     If 
therefore  man's  feeling  in  respect  to  the  world  in  which  he 
is  be  erroneous,  it  is  a  necessary  consequence,  that  princi- 
ples of  action  based  on  that  feeling  should  mislead  :  if  we 
are  under  illusion,  only  by  escape  from  that  illusion  can 
we  hope  wisely  to  conduct  our  life.    Nor  is  evidence  want- 
ing that  man  does  need,  for  practical  purposes,  a  truer 
knowledge  than  he  has  hitherto  brought  into  exercise. 
Man  fails  in  his  dealings  with  the  world.    Not  in  respect 
to  his  action  upon  phenomena  :  of  these,  so  far  as  he  knows 
and  obeys  their  laws,  he  proves  himself  the  master.     He 
can  use  the  physical  world  for  his  purposes,  but  he  fails  to 
conform  himself  truly  to  the  nature  of  things  :  there  is  a 
want  of  accord  between  himself  and  Nature,  of  which  he 
bitterly  rues  the  consequences.     Evidently  he  goes  wrong, 
incurs  disappointment,  runs  into  evil  while  seeking  good. 

Therefore  it  were  an  unquestionable  practical  gain  to 
recognise  the  illusion  under  which  we  have  been  in  respect 
to  the  world,  even  if  we  could  know  no  more.  From  in- 
numerable mistakes  it  might  save  us,  of  treating  that  as 
the  true  reality,  which  is  not ;  or  of  suffering  ourselves  to 

[263] 


264 


OF  THE  FACT  OF  HUMAN  LIFE. 


[B.  IV. 


C.  I.] 


OF  THE   FACT  OF  HUMAN  LIFE. 


265 


think  of  that  as  truly  good  or  evil,  which  we  do  but  feel  so. 
But  this  is  not  all.  The  illusion  yields,  not  to  uncertainty, 
but  to  a  knowledge  worthy  of  the  name.  The  fact  and 
meaning  of  human  experience  we  know  :  it  is  the  making 
man  alive.  Remembering  this,  the  world  stands  before  us 
all  in  light.  From  an  evil  state,  the  worst  of  states,  of 
which  alone  it  can  be  said  in  its  true  meaning  that  it  is 
death,  the  state  which  constitutes  him  a  self  seeker,  and  is 
the  cause  of  all  sinful  deeds,  man  is  being  raised  :  raised 
to  a  state  of  true  and  actual  life,  absolute  and  eternal ; 
death  being  destroyed,  so  that  he  shall  have  to  regard  self 
no  more. 

The  world  is  being  redeemed  :  this  is  the  fact  of  human 
life.  Whatever  our  experience  may  be,  that  which  causes 
it  is  the  raising  up  of  man  from  death.  The  evidence  of 
this  lies  in  the  necessity  which  has  been  traced  in  it. 
Science,  proving  that  all  things  are  bound  together  by  an 
inevitable  chain,  of  which  no  link,  even  the  minutest,  might 
be  wanting,  gives  demonstration  of  a  fact  which  might 
overwhelm  us  with  its  glory :  for  thereby  we  know  that  all 
which  we  experience  is  necessary  for  that  which  is  the  fact 
of  the  world^s  history  ;  necessary  for  the  carrying  out  of 
man's  redemption.  Christ  has  interpreted  to  us  the  Neces- 
sity of  nature  :  has  shown  us  the  fact  which  is  the  one  and 
universal  Cause.  For  the  cause  of  our  experience  is  not 
that  inert  existence  we  have  conceived  ;  the  necessity  by 
which  all  things  are  determined  is  not  that  dead  necessity 
we  have  supposed.  It  is  the  necessity  of  love :  the  love  of 
God,  which  must  redeem  the  world. 

Let  us  say  it  with  reverence :  human  experience  is  tlie 
making  Man  alive.  This  is  the  fact  on  which  to  fix  our 
eye  ;  which,  if  we  would  be  right  to  the  world,  we  must  re- 
gard ;  seeing  which  we  see  it  as  it  truly  is.  We  must 
remember  that  man  is  dead  and  must  be  made  new  :  so  new 


"J 


that  he  must  be  delivered  wholly  from  himself.  We  are 
appalled  at  sin  and  think  :  Can  that  work  man's  redemp- 
tion ?  But  it  is  even  so  :  the  evil  is  not  in  the  sin,  but  in 
that  which  is  the  cause  of  sin.  By  sin  our  death  is  made 
conscious  to  ourselves,  and  man  learns  what  he  is.  If  there 
were  no  sin  there  were  no  less  evil,  man  were  not  less 
dead,  but  the  death  could  not  be  destroyed.  There  is  no 
difficulty  in  seeing  rightness,  and  love,  in  the  existence  of 
sin,  while  our  loathing  of  it,  and  feeling  of  guilt  in  it,  are 
increased,  if  we  can  see  the  evil  of  the  state  from  which 
man  is  raised  ;  that  sinful  deeds  do  but  make  manifest  an 
evil  which  exists  apart  from  them,  and  is  their  source  :  an 
evil  which,  without  them,  could  not  be  done  away.  How 
evil  must  be  that  state  of  man,  which  turns  the  love  of  God 
into  occasions  of  iniquity ;  which,  even  at  the  expense  of 
the  whole  mass  of  human  crime,  God  must  destrov.  For 
the  end  is  worthy  ;  worthy  not  only  of  the  woe  mankind 
have  borne,  the  tears  they  have  shed,  but  also  of  their 
crimes  and  guilt.  Because  that  end  is  not  happiness  but 
holiness,  the  perfection  of  self-sacrifice,  the  only  good.*  It 
is  not  the  evil  that  dead  humanity  should  sin :  that  is  a 
proof  and  triumph  of  Eternal  Love  j  for  therein  man  is 
redeemed. 

Fixing  our  eye  upon  the  fact  of  man's  redemption,  all 
things  are  made  new  to  us.  A  glory  almost  too  great  to 
bear  transfigures  this  poor  life :  passing  all  thought  and 
all  desire,  passing  all  dreams,  and  yet  no  dream,  but  plain 
and  demonstrable  truth.  Not  less  can  content  the  infinite 
heart  of  God,  nor  the  Saviour's  boundless  love  :  His  heart 
who  gives  us  more  than  we  can  ask  or  think.  His  love  who 
makes  us  one  with  Himself,  and  bowed  His  head  to  death, 


*  Happiness,  except  as  one  with  self-sacrifice,  cannot  be  said  to  be  good. 
It  is  only  felt  as  good,  which  is  entirely  different. 

12 


266 


OF  THE  FACT  OF  HUMAN  LIFE. 


[B.  IV. 


that  He  might  be  the  first  born  of  many  brethren.  For 
the  fact  of  all  our  pain,  and  sorrow,  and  distress,  that  for 
which  all  are  necessary,  is  the  making  man  alive.  God 
gives  to  us  to  suffer  for  that  end  ;  Christ  gives  to  us  to  be 
even  as  He  was.  He  has  made  known  the  fact  of  human 
life  ;  the  Son  of  Man  is  revealed  in  Him.  Every  suffering, 
every  loss,  is  borne  for  man's  life,  necessary  to  that  end, 
which  could  not  be  without  them :  necessary,  not  as  condi- 
tions or  as  means,  but  as  the  very  fact  itself,  the  mode  in 
which  it  was  wrought  out. 

To  believe  is  salvation :  to  believe  in  Christ  the  Re- 
deemer of  the  world,  that  He  saves  man,  and  will  subdue 
all  to  Himself:  this  saves  us.    It  makes  us  know  God  ;  and 
to  know  Him  is  life.     To  know  Him,  it  is  enough.    It  was 
ignorance,  and  blindness,  and  mistrust,  that  held  us  captive, 
and  bound  us  in  the  chains  of  death.    Because  we  knew 
Him  not,  nor  His  work,  we  grasped  at  pleasure,  we  fled 
from  pain  and  sacrifice,  we  exalted  our  own  will,  and  found 
our  good  in  that  which  was  pleasing  to  ourselves.   To  know 
God  turns  darkness  into  light,  sorrow  to  gladness,  evil  and 
pain  and  wretchedness  into  unbounded  joy  :  makes  wel- 
come to  us  every  loss,  ennobles  all  things  trivial,  gives  to 
earth  the  blessedness  of  heaven.    To  the  saddest,  weariest 
hours  comes  a  delight  which  makes  all   other  pleasures 
poor.    From  this  sorrow  the  rejoicing  springs :  we  are  suf- 
fering that  man  may  live.     Therein   are  we  one  with 
Christ,  whom  all  hearts  do  pronounce  Most  Blessed,  and 
fill  up  that  which  is  behind  of  the  sufferings  He  bore.   We 
too  are  ready,  to  be  offered.    Our  hearts  are  taken  captive 
utterly  by  love.    The  terrors  that  have  haunted  us,  the 
evils  we  have  shunned,  were  but  dark  shadows  from  the 
blackness  in  ourselves.     We  look  abroad  again,  and  the 
light  of  heaven  glows  unchequered  over  all.    Our  fears  are 
gone.    If  there  be  no  evil  but  that  which  love  makes  ncc- 


c.  I.] 


OF  THE   FACT  OF  HUMAN  LIFE. 


267 


essary,  then  there  is  no  evil :  no  pain  but  pain  borne  for 
man's  life,  then  is  pain  utterly  transformed.  The  one 
Love,  that  is  in  and  through  all  things,  by  which  all  things 
are,  the  Love  that  is  the  only  joy,  smiles  also  through  the 
tears  of  sorrows.  Life  stands  confessed  beneath  the  mask 
of  death. 


CHAPTER   II. 


OF  ILLUSION. 


From  the  ingrained  fashion 
Of  thia  earthly  nature 
Which  mars  thy  creature, 

From  grief  which  is  but  passion  ; 
Good  Lord  deliver  us  1 


That  man  is  being  raised  from  a  dead  state  into  life  gives 
a  solution  of  the  otherwise  insoluble  problems  of  our  ex- 
perience. The  light  which  this  thought  throws  upon  sin, 
showing  it  to  be  a  necessary  result  of  the  death  from  wliich 
man  has  to  be  delivered  (the  evil  of  which  it  displays  and 
brings  to  our  consciousness,  but  cannot  increase),  is  but 
one  example  of  its  bearing  upon  the  mysteries  that  throng 
around  us.  Our  perplexity  arises  from  our  inadequate  ap- 
prehension of  the  fact  that  our  present  state  of  being  is 
not  the  LIFE  of  man  ;  that  ours  is  not  the  true  humanity. 
For,  thereby,  we  tacitly  take  ourselves  always  as  the 
standard,  and  assuming  in  our  thoughts  that  which  we  feel 
as  that  which  is,  we  surround  ourselves  with  darkness ; 
not  reflecting  that  a  being  in  a  wrong  state  must  feel,  as 
well  as  act,  wrongly.  Thus,  for  example,  has  come  an 
utter  confusion  into  our  ideas  respecting  good  and  evil. 
For  it  is  evident  that  the  raising  man  from  death  to  life  is 
good,  the  only  possible  true  good  for  him  ;  and  whatever 
thingH  are  included  in,  or  necessary  for,  that  end  must  be 

[268] 


c.  II.] 


OF  ILLUSION. 


269 


also  perfectly  good.  But  these  things  are  felt  as  evil  by 
us ;  to  us  they  are  evil,  involving  the  loss  of  that  which 
we  value,  the  failure  of  that  which  we  attempt,  the  bear- 
ing of  that  which  is  painful.  We  feel  as  evil  that  which 
is  good.  It  is  evident  that  we  do  so,  for  we  feel  as  evil 
that  which  God  does  :  things  which  constitute  part  of  the 
course  of  nature,  and  cannot  be  dissociated  from  His  im- 
mediate agency.  The  fact,  therefore,  with  which  we  have 
truly  to  deal  is,  that  we  feel  as  evil  things  that  are  not 
evil.  We  should  ask :  What  is  the  matter  with  us  that 
we  feel  God's  act  as  evil  ?  But  instead  of  this,  taking  our 
feelings  as  expressing  the  truth,  we  have  been  asking : 
How  can  there  be  so  much  evil?  By  our  self-belief,  and 
confidence  in  our  own  impressions,  our  whole  thought  has 
been  perverted.  Why  must  we  feel  so  much  evil  ?  is  quite 
a  different  question  from  the  other.  How  can  so  much  evil 
be  ?  and  especially  different  in  this,  that  it  can  be  answered. 
We  must  feel  evil  because  man  is  in  a  wrong  state,  and  is 
to  be  made  right.  It  is  not  an  evil  thing  that  man,  being 
as  he  is,  should  feel  evil ;  it  is  not  a  mystery.  If  his  feel- 
ing were  not  evil,  the  fact  could  not  be  good  ;  for  he  does 
not  feel  things  as  they  are.  Nor  can  the  amount  of  the 
evil  felt  by  him,  however  absolute  or  enormous,  affect  the 
case.  It  does  but  prove  more  emphatically  the  wrongness 
of  his  feeling,  and  place  in  a  clearer  light,  thereby,  the 
wrongness  of  his  being.  That  cannot  be  the  true  human- 
ity, by  which  things  are  felt  as  they  are  not ;  God's  act 
felt  as  evil.  The  false  feeling  proves  the  wrongness  of  the 
state  to  which  it  belonffs. 

Evil  pertains  to  the  phenomenon.  The  feeling  of  evil 
is  inseparable  from  the  feeling  of  the  phenomenal  as  real ; 
it  is  inseparable,  therefore,  from  the  present  state  of  man, 
the  essential  character  of  which  is  that  phenomena  are 
real  to  him.    Evil,  therefore,  must  be  felt  as  real  by  us, 


270 


OF  ILLUSION. 


[B.  IV. 


until  the  defect  of  our  being  is  done  away  :  but  this  false 
feeling  on  our  part  need  not  deceive  and  mislead  us  :  we 
need  not  act  as  if  it  were  true.*    Even  while  our  feeling 
continues  erroneous,  our  belief  and  understanding  may  be 
right,  and  our  action  thereby  be  redeemed  from  misdirec- 
tion.   We  can  recognise  the  cause,  in  our  own  condition, 
which  makes  us  feel  as  we  do,  we  can  fix  our  eye  upon  the 
fact,  we  can  make  our  action  true  to  that  which  is.    In 
all  our  feeling  of  evil  we  can  think  :  I  am  feeling  as  evil 
that  which  is  not  so.    We  can  make  even  our  words  con- 
form to  truth,  and  say  of  every  misfortune,  not '  how  evil 
this  IS,'  but,  *  how  evil  I  feel  this.'    Nay,  we  mav  go  fur- 
ther,  knowing  the  fact  of  man's  redemption.    Even  the 
feeling  of  evil,  though  it  cannot  be  altered,  may  be  swal- 
lowed up  and  lost,  so  absorbed  into  a  larger  happiness 
that  its  very  character  is  changed.    If  through  the  feeling 
of  evil  man  must  be  redeemed,  how  could  we  be  willing 
not  to  bear  our  part  ?    It  is  evil  that  we  should  feel  pain, 
^  should  suffer  loss,  that  man  may  live  ?    Can  we  fail  to  find 
m  that  our  truest  blessedness  ?    To  regard  the  fact ;  to 
know  the  redemption  of  the  world,  and  to  fix  our  eyes  on 
that ;  this  is  the  cure  for  sorrow.     This  is  the  gospel,  the 
good  tidings  of  great  joy,  which  are  to  all  people,  flooding 
earth  with  a  sea  of  gladness. 

Christ  shows  us  that  the  world  is  going  right ;  not 
wrong  as  we  suppose  :  that  it  is  full  of  God's  glory.'    So 


However  much  evil  there  might  be  in  these  things,  it  is  clear  that  it 
would  not  be  '  real'  to  a  being  to  whom  these  things  were  not  real,  to  whom 
they  were  but  appearances :  the  evil  to  him  would  be  apparent  only  This 
18  the  truth:  evU  is  apparent,  not  real.  But  it  is  felt  as  real  by  those  who 
feel  apparent  things  as  real.  It  is  real  to  those  in  whom  tliere  is  defect  •  iu 
whom  there  is  such  a  self  as  ours.  To  be  delivered  from  evil  we  must  be 
delivered  from  our  self!  Then,  when  the  fact  is  truly  known  and  ielt,  evil 
18  no  more  real :  it  is  known  and  felt  as  love. 


C.  II.] 


OF  ILLUSION. 


271 


He  gives  us  happiness.  For  the  sting  of  evil  is  that  we 
think  it  truly  evil ;  that  we  do  not  know  that  the  fact  is 
good,  utterly  and  entirely  good.  If  we  will  recognise  the 
death  of  man,  his  need  to  be  made  alive,  and  the  fact  that 
he  is  being  made  alive,  and  that  all  human  experience  is 
necessary  for  that  end,  evil  is  no  more  evil.  All  this  is  the 
form  in  which  man's  redemption  is  presented  to  us,  and  we 
therein  rejoice  and  will  rejoice.  What  does  it  matter  that 
it  is  painful  to  us,  if  the  world  therein  be  saved  ? 

Tlie  mystery  of  evil  is  that  we  feel  it,  not  that  it  is  : 
and  that  is  no  mystery.  Christ  has  taken  it  away,  show- 
ing us  the  death  of  man  that  is,  his  life  that  shall  be  : 
sliowing  us  the  meaning  of  all  pain,  and  loss,  and  failure ; 
that  it  is  for  the  life  of  man.  What  we  naturally  seek  and 
desire  is  to  have  the  world  as  we  should  like  it,  conformed 
to  our  feelings  of  good  and  right ;  such  as  suits  us  in  this 
present  state.  And  we  think  it  evil  that  it  will  not  be  so, 
and  lament  over  the  mystery  of  God's  ways.  But  to  have 
tliat  which  we  naturally  desire,  were  to  have  man  con- 
firmed in  death,  were  to  forego  his  redemption.  He  must 
be  made  different  from  that  which  he  is ;  therefore  the 
world  must  be  evil  to  him.  Because  it  is  too  good  for 
him,  he  feels  it  evil ;  because  it  is  so  truly,  absolutely  good. 
We  would  have  it  good  to  the  self,  but  tlie  only  goodness 
is  the  destruction  of  the  self.  For  which  destruction, 
misery  must  be,  and  cruellest  pains,  and  crushing  of  ten- 
derest  hope  and  love  ;  nor  only  so,  but  rampant  guilt,  and 
wrong  triumphant,  and  sacrifice  of  noblest  aims.  That 
which  were  good  enough  for  man's  desires  is  not  good 
enough  for  God.  If  there  were  not  that  which  we  feel  as 
evil,  that  perfectly  good  fact  which  God  wills  could  not 
be.  In  all  afflictions  we  may  say  :  it  is  very  hard  to  bear, 
but  the  world  is  going  right :  shall  I  not  bear  this, 
if  man  be  saved  and  this  be  necessary  ?  If  this  cup  may 
not  pass  away,  shall  I  not  drink  it? 


272 


OF   ILLUSION. 


[B.  IV. 


C.  IL] 


OF  ILLUSION. 


273 


Is  not  Christ's  death  the  joy  and  glory  of  the  world, 
the  best  thing  that  ever  happened  ?  In  it  we  may  see  the 
difference  of  the  fact  from  the  appearance.  For  from  a 
human  point  of  view  what  is  the  death  of  Christ,  but  a 
black  murder  ;  deceit  and  violence  crushing  the  hopefullest 
of  lives?  •  We  thought  it  had  been  he,  who  should  have 
restored  the  kingdom  unto  Israel.'  But  more  was  to  be 
done  than  that,  more  and  better ;  a  work  for  which  not 
His  life  only,  nor  His  agony,  but  lives  unnumbered  must 
be  given,  and  agonies  drawn  out  through  every  age.  At 
all  expense  of  woe,  man  must  be  made  alive. 

Thus  we  see,  also,  why  man's  present  life  must  have 
been  such  a  deception :  why  he  feels  that  which  is  phenom- 
enal as  reality,  finds  the  spiritual  physical,  and  has  been 
condemned  all  these  ages  to  believe  it  so.    To  have  been 
in  error  and  deceived  was  right  for  him.    This  also  is  the 
fact  of  his  redemption  ;    for  so  he   pursues  unrealities, 
places  his  confidence  in  that  which  falsifies  its  promise, 
seeks  rest  where  no  rest  can  be  found.    So  he  fails,  and 
learns  his  ignorance  ;  so  he  rushes  into  sin,  and  learns  his 
vileness.     So  he  is  taught  that  in  his  very  being  he  must 
be  made  new ;  must  be  delivered  from  "^himself,  and  be 
made  living  with  an  eternal  life.    The  reason  of  man's 
perceiving  as  he  does,  feeling  himself  in  a  material  and 
transient  world,  is  that  this  experience  is  necessary  for  the 
work  of  his  redemption.    He  must  have  this  consciousness, 
that  thereby  his  state  may  be  altered  :  he  is  under  illusion, 
not  that  he  may  continue  so,  but  that  he  may  be  delivered; 
that  he  may  feel  its  evil,  and  escape  its  tyranny.     '  The' 
creature  is  made  subject  to  vanity,'  but  it  is  in  hope.     We 
cannot  be  holden  of  its  chains.    For  what  bondage  is  so 
wretched,  what  slavery  so  degraded,  as  being  ruled  and 
driven  by  an  illusion ;  spell-bound  beneath  the  [)owcr  of  a 


/ 


phantom  world  ?  To  know  that  we  have  been  so  deluded 
is  itself  deliverance.  Once  convinced  that  the  eternal 
things  are  the  true  realities,  our  slavery  is  at  an  end. 
Man  wakes  from  his  troubled  dream  to  see  the  glory  of 
eternal  Day  argund  him ;  braces  himself  to  waking  life, 
and  looks  back,  with  mingled  gladness  and  surprise,  upon 
the  dim  chimeras  which  his  unnatural  slumber  had  invested 
with  a  brief  reality,  a  transient  power  to  make  him  glad 
or  sorry,  hopeful  or  afraid. 


12* 


C.  III.] 


OF  REALITY. 


275 


CHAPTER    III. 

OF   REALITY. 

The  foalest  act  with  which  man's  hands  are  soiled, 
That  telleth,  loud,  humanity's  disgrace, 
Leaves  on  the  earth  its  evil ;  undefiled 
The  fact  uplifts  to  heaven  its  holy  face, 
And  blotteth  not  the  pages  of  that  book 
Whereon  the  brooding  eye  of  God  doth  look. 

The  error  of  our  feeling  is  that  phenomena  are  the  reality 
to  us  ;  the  error  of  our  practice  is  that  we  treat  them  as 
reality.     We  do  not  see  the  worth  of  temporal  events. 
Overlooking  their  relation  to  the  fact  of  man's  redemption, 
we  overlook  all  that  is  real  and  absolute  in  them,  all  that 
constitutes  their  value  and  necessity.     If  in  all  things  we 
regard  the  fact,  letting  our  thoughts  go  on,  beyond  Our 
own  impressions,  to  that  which  truly  is,  then  we  can  treat 
all  things  aright.    For  the  world's  redemption  is  a  fact 
which,  by  its  nature,  surpasses  and  subordinates  in  our 
regard  all  others.    In  its  presence,  illusions  lose  their 
power  ;  new  forces  influence  us  ;  the  world  is  not  to  us 
what  it  was  before,  but  infinitely  more.     Our  whole  being 
is  enlarged.     A  new  and  overpowering  thought  absorbs 
the  private  regard.    It  cannot  grieve  us  any  more  to 
suffer,  or  to  forego  our  own  desires.    A  joy  so  great 
springs  out  of  the  suffering,  in  our  knowledge  of  tha^t  for 
which  it  is,  that  suffering  itself  is  changed.     Knowledge 
of  man's  redemption,  which  shows  all   suffering  to  be 

(274) 


suffering  for  the  world,  makes  a  new  thing  of  human  life  ; 
inverts  it ;  more  than  doubles  it ;  extracts  from  that  part 
of  it  (how  large  a  part !)  which  we  have  deemed  mere  loss 
and  evil,  a  value  infinitely  exceeding  all  the  rest ;  makes 
suffering  more  to  be  desired  than  that  to  which  we  have 
heretofore  abused  the  name  of  joy.  For  in  suffering  we 
are  one  with  Christ.  With  what  a  radiance  it  crowns 
anew  the  brow  of  Jesus  ;  making  the  sacred  words :  *  I 
lay  down  my  life  for  the  world,'  more  sacred  evermore. 

We  have  not  seen  the  truth  of  human  life,  we  have  over- 
looked the  verv  fact  of  that  which  it  is  ;  what  wonder, 
then,  that  it  has  been  found  a  gloomy  mystery  ?  for  that 
men  have  found  it  so  cannot  be  denied.  It  stands  written 
in  imperishable  records.  Literature  is  man's  thought  of 
life,  wherein  he  gives  verdict  that  it  is  inscrutable  and 
dark.  And  it  is  so  utterly  ;  unless  man  be  in  a  state 
which  makes  all  the  evil  that  attends  his  course  necessary 
for  his  deliverance  ;  unless  wc  can  turn  the  clouds  that 
are  around  his  path  to  briglitness,  recognise  their  true 
secret ;  and  understand  that  this  Being,  so  surrounded 
and  penetrated  by  evil,  is  not  tlie  true  Man  ;  this  mon- 
strous course  of  crimes  and  errors  not  man's  life,  but  the 
making  him  alive.  The  evil  cannot  be  denied  ;  it  is  too 
foul,  too  loathsome.  The  universal  conscience  of  man- 
kind rises  up  to  rebuke  him  who  would  make  light  of  it. 
To  interpret  human  life,  we  must  learn  some  unknown 
fact,  which  shall  bring  evil  into  a  new  light.  This  un- 
known fact  is  supplied  by  the  perception  of  man's  death. 
This  takes  away  all  evil  ;  or  leaves  it,  rather,  but  as  the 
manifestation  of  infinite  and  boundless  love,  the  Perfect 
Good.  Our  thouglit  that  things  are  really  as  we  feel,  our 
belief  that  man  has  life,  alone  prevent  our  knowing  and 
feeling  the  trutli,  and  compel  us  to  unite  evil  with  our 
thouirht  of  God. 


i-i 


276 


OF  REALITY. 


[B.  IV. 


C.  III.] 


OF  REALITY. 


277 


We  canuot  be  happy,  nor  content  (it  were  inhumaD  to 
be  so),  while  we  think  that  there  is  truly  evil,  that  the 
world  is  going,  even  in  part,  to  an  evil  end.     And  avc 
cannot,  without  the  grossest  closing  of  our  eyes  to  facts, 
think  otherwise,  unless  we  can  recognise  something  more 
in  human  life  than  it  appears  to  us  ;  a  reference  to  some 
other  end  than  those  which  we  naturally  suppose.     For  in 
respect  to  those  ends  it  is  a  failure  palpable  and  manifest. 
Neither  man's  enjoyment,  nor  his  virtue,  is  secured.    But 
to  know  man's  need  of  redemption  from  a  state  of  death, 
and  to  understand  the  fact  of  it,  makes  all  thinofs  risfht : 
gives  us  a  source  of  happiness  perfect  and  unassailable,  a 
spring  of  energy  which  nothing  can  damp.     Be  the  plie- 
nomenon  what  it  may,  of  agonising  misery,  or  wrong  un- 
speakable, our  eye  is  fixed  upon  the  deep  underlying  fact : 
in  this,  too,  man  is  being  delivered  from  himself,  being 
raised  from  self-seeking  to  self-sacrifice.    Nothing  could  be 
spared,  nothing  could  be  otherwise.     Man,  being  as  he  is, 
must  so  be  made  alive.     Nothing  is  evil  in  that  which  is. 
In   the  saving  of  man  from  self-dominion,  from   wrong- 
feeling,  and  the  possibility  of  sin,  tliere  is  no  evil ;  none  in 
the  fact  on  which  God  looks,  and  all  look  who  truly  see  ; 
all  who  see  aright  the  state  in  which  man  is,  and  the 
Necessity  that  he  be  saved  from  it. 

Seeing  thus  in  all  things  the  fact  of  man's  redemption, 
the  world  is  made  a  new  and  different  world  to  us.  The 
things  which  make  us  do  evil  lose  their  power  ;  we  no 
more  covet,  are  no  more  afraid.  Our  action  becomes  right 
to  nature  ;  conformed  to  the  truth  of  things ;  it  cannot 
end  in  disappointment ;  therefore  cannot  fail.  For  we  feel 
truly.  In  all  things  we  look  at  man's  redemption,  and 
when  it  comes  that  we  are  made  to  suffer  and  to  lose,  and 
our  desires  are  set  at  nought  and  frustrated,  then  glows 
our  heart  with  a  joy  unparalleled,  too  great  for  word?,  fillinf^ 


I 


our  faith  and  love  to  the  uttermost,  making  us  know  what 
heaven  is,  and  what  the  joy  God  chooses  for  Himself,  the 
eternal  joy,  wherewith  the  infinite  fulness  of  His  bosom 
throbs,  Avhereby  he  is  the  blessed  God.  His  own  joy, 
but  a  joy  He  keeps  not  to  Himself,  but  gives  to  us  also, 
too  unworthy  ;  the  joy  of  sacrifice  for  man's  redemption. 
Passing  belief,  and  yet  not  passing  ;  the  humblest  faith 
must  stretch  her  hands  even  to  that  height  of  glory,  and 
human  love  expand  its  puny  measure  to  become  the  heir 
of  God.  Of  God  revealed  in  Christ,  made  manifest  in 
Him,  so  that  we  know  Him,  truly,  actually  know  Him,  and 
see  Him  as  He  is.  He  is  the  sacrificer,  joining  us  with 
Himself  therein  :  that  is  to  know  God.  It  is  to  be  one 
with  Christ  the  Saviour.  We  can  believe  it,  for  though 
it  is  we  receive  the  too  great  blessedness,  it  is  God  who 
gives.  Who  is  the  Giver,  whose  happiness  is  in  giving, 
all  whose  gifts  surpass  our  thoughts  and  fill  us  with 
an  infinite  surprise. 

Oh  weary  and  woe-stricken  world,  oh  vainly  striving 
men,  your  misery  is  that  you  do  not  know  ;  that  you  see 
not  that  which  is  :—  Wliy  you  are  sacrificed,  why  you  are 
wretched,  by  what  necessity  such  cruel  pains  assault  you, 
such  bitter  lacerations  of  the  dearest  ties.  A  sevenfold 
mystery  besets  you  round,  and  tears  as  of  blood  drop  from 
your  darkened  eyes.  Behold  and  seel  The  Man  who 
has  gathered  up  all  sorrow  and  deprived  it  of  its  sting  ;^ 
the  pattern  of  all  mourners  ;  the  revealer  of  the  Father. 
Giving  His  life  for  the  world  He  stands,  the  head  and 
crown  of  humanity,  which  drinks  in  life  from  Him,  and 
grows  into  His  image.  We  too  are  made  conformable 
to  His  death,  drink  of  His  cup,  with  His  baptism  are 
baptised.  For  if  in  our  agony  the  world  is  saved,  ours 
shall  be  a  willing  agony  like  His. 


278 


OF  REALITY. 


[B.  IV. 


C.  III.] 


OF  REALITY. 


279 


There  is  no  true  consolation  for  sorrow  but  in  knowinir 
man  redeemed  ;  in  knowing  that  the  world  is  going  right. 
That  is,  in  fixing  our  regard  upon  a  good  so  great,  so 
much  better  than  anything  we  naturally  regard,  that  it 
makes  all  evil  good,  and  satisfies  us  for  the  loss  and  ovcr- 
tlirow  of  our  best  desires  and  hopes.     Placing  our  happi- 
ness, not  in  having  what  we  like,  in  obtaining  what  wc 
should  choose,  but  in  the  goodness  of  the  fact,  the  only 
rightful  ground  of  happiness,  we  have  attained  a  perfect 
consolation  in  all  ill.     Revealing  the  perfectly  good  fact, 
the  redemption  of  man  from  being  such  as  he  is,  Christ 
gives  peace  :  a  comfort  not  infected  with  the  bane  of  self- 
regard.      For  only  by  knowing  and  believing  this,  can 
we  escape  that  worst  of  wretchedness.     If  man  be  not 
going  right,  if  all  be  not  well  for  him  in  spite  of  seeming, 
in  what  can  we  rejoice  but  in  the  thought  that  we  are  or 
shall  be  happy,  though  others  be  not  so  ?    whicli  is  the 
greatest  of  all  curses,  the  very  depth  of  death.     All  tliat 
is  in    us,  not  utterly  corrupt,  abhors  that   most  of  all. 
Tlierefore  do  some  men  deny  that  man  is  corrupt,  and  rep- 
resent sin    as  a  trifling   thing,  repudiating    God's    just 
anger  and  the  inevitable  punishment.      They  crush    the 
voice  of  conscience,  because  they  cannot  be  content  tliat 
Man  should  not  be  saved  ;  because  they  will  not  place 
their  happiness  in  their  own  unparticipated  good.     There- 
fore do  others  say  :  our  happiness  will  be  in  God's  glory 
and  perfect  justice,  irrespective  of  the  doom  of  those  who 
reap  the  just  reward  of  guilt ;  crushing  the  human  instincts 
in  tlieir   breast  by  the  overpowering  force  of  conscience. 
For  what  man  could  be  happy  in  his  brother's  execution, 
because  justice  is  fulfilled,  and  the  honor  of  the  law,  God's 
law  thougli  it  be,  maintained  ?    If  this  be  man's  life,  and 
therewith  his  probation,  the  conscience  and  the  heart  are 
hopelessly  at  variance.     But  see  the  leeonciloment  of  this 


ii ' 


i,'» 


strife  m  the  recognition  of  man'g^death  and  his  deliverance 
Man's  redemption  from  a  state  in  which  he  wants  that 
which  constitutes  his  Life,  known  as  the  history  of  the 
world,  fulfils  all  the  demands  of  our  nature,  justifies  all  our 
convictions,  satisfies  all  our  aspirations  :  accounts  for  all 
that  is  in  us,  all  that  is  around  :  displays  the  dark  and 
tangled  labyrinth  in  clear  and  glorious  light. 

For  even  such  a  deliverance  we  need :  to  be  saved 
wholly  from  ourselves.  When  we  look  into  our  hearts 
how  mean  and  unworthy  is  even  that  which  is  best  in  us' 
how  utterly  marred  and  spoilt.  A  self-regard  lurks  in  it 
all,  which  we  would  fain  hide  even  from  our  own  eye 
And  in  this  we  feel  it  most,  that  when  we  have  done  the 
best  deed,  and  most  have  given  up  ourselves,  tlien  the 
hateful  thing  will  come  again,  and  we  think  :  Now  I  have 
done  well,  then  I  was  truly  good.  '  AVho  shall  deliver  us 
from  the  body  of  this  death  ? ' 

Christ  shall  deliver  us,  by  the  Fact  He  shows  us,  the 
God  He  makes  us  know.  By  showing  us  what  Life  is  and  ' 
what  Death,  and  what  all  things  are,  making  the  world  so 
different.  He  shall  drive  that  demon  wliollv  from  our 
hearts,  and  God  himself  shall  dwell  therein.^  He  shall 
save  us  utterly  from  self-regard,  swallowing  it  up  in  an 
absolute  and  boundless  joy  in  that  which  is.  A  joy  in 
God,  perfect  and  complete,  a  delight  so  full  in  the  eternal 
good,  that  no  self-concern  can  have  any  place  :  self-sacrifice 
80  perfect  that  it  is  no  more  a  sacrifice. 

For  his  true  salvation,  man  needs  to  be  delivered  from 
himself,  from  the  necessity  of  making  his  own  gratification 
his  chief  object.  The  problem  of  humanity  is  to  make  love 
the  spring  of  human  actions.  It  is  apparently  a  hopeless 
task :  experience  seems  to  forbid  the  expectation,  reason 
will  not  sanction  it,  calm  investigation  of  what  man  is 
shatters  the  fond  dream.     It  is  man's  nature  to  act  from 


280 


OF  REALITY. 


FB.  IV. 


interest  and  from  passion.  It  seems  impossible  to  do  more 
than  wisely  to  direct  his  regard  to  his  own  welfare,  that 
he  may  prefer  that  which  is  most  to  be  valued,  and  subor- 
dinate the  passing  and  inferior  to  the  superior  and  endless. 
But  this  is  the  question  whefher  the  dead  can  live.  If  the 
true  fact  be  known,  it  may  be  answered  the  other  way. 
Believing  man's  redemption,  and  knowing  what  the  world 
truly  is,  love  must  take  the  place  of  self-regard.  It  asserts 
its  rightful  power.  Its  lost  dominion  is  restored.  With 
that  alteration  of  our  thought,  our  life  too  is  altered  ;  we 
cannot  be  as  we  were  before.  The  whole  scope  of  our  re- 
gard, affection,  and  desire  is  new.  We  are  taken  out  of 
ourselves  by  a  Power  above  ourselves,  and  understand 
what  that  saying  means  :  '  That  which  is  impossible  with 
man  is  possible  with  God.'  We  want  no  more,  because  we 
have.  There  is  nothing  for  us  to  desire,  except  to  be  made 
free  from  the  remaining  deatli :  no  other  blessedness,  no 
other  glory  than  this  we  have,  of  being  one  with  Christ : 
only  that  we  might  be  fully  one  with  Him. 

And  the  glory  of  this  Life  embraces  not  only  the  great 
events  which  rouse  enthusiasm,  and  kindle  energy  in  all ; 
it  extends  to  the  mean  and  ordinary  incidents  in  which  we 
are  so  weak.  There  is  no  great  or  small,  where  all  alike 
is  necessary.  Nothing  is  so  trivial,  that  in  it  the  eternal 
fact  is  not ;  nothing  so  mere  an  accident  that  it  must  not 
have  been  for  man's  redemption. 


CHAPTER   IV. 


OF  WEONGNESS. 

Esther  make  the  tree  good  and  his  frait  good,  or  else  the  tree  corrupt  and  his  fl-uit 
corrupt. 

Let  none  admire 
That  riches  grow  in  heil,  that  soil  may  best 
Reserve  the  precious  bane.  Par.  Lost, 


Using  the  world  as  we  naturally  do,  we  can  attain  certain 
ends  and  achieve  much  that  we  feel  desirable.  Yet  an 
incurable  fatality  seems  to  attend  all  our  actions.  Perma- 
nent satisfaction  fails  us.  The  results  will  not  answer  to 
our  hopes,  and  a  mysterious  necessity  of  evil  seems  to  be 
in  the  world,  that  leaves  the  most  sanguine,  at  last,  hope- 
less of  a  remedy.  This  experience  is  too  familiar,  and  has 
been  described  too  often,  to  need  any  more  to  be  insisted 
on.  But  there  is  an  advantage  in  understanding  it,  and  in 
seeing  that  it  is  no  mystery,  bnt  a  natural  and  necessary 
thing.  It  is  the  inevitable  effect  of  error.  Whoever  at- 
tempts any  work  under  a  false  conception,  meets  with  the 
same  experience,  as  men  find  in  dealing  with  the  world  as 
if  it  were,  in  reality,  what  it  seems  to  them.  Under  a 
misapprehension  of  the  true  nature  of  that  with  which  he 
has  to  do,  a  man  places  certain  objects  before  himself 
which  he  feels  convinced  will  ensure  what  he  desires  ;  he 
uses  means  in  pursuit  of  these  objects  with  ardor  and  satis- 
faction ;  he  rejoices  in  them,  he  is  assured  he  will  succeed, 
he  seems  to  himself  to  have  all  that  is  needed  for  success : 

[281] 


fl 


282 


OF  WRONGNESS. 


[B.  IV. 


C.  IV.] 


OF   WROXGNESS. 


283 


but  the  end  is  failure.  He  is  astonished,  perplexed,  angry  ; 
he  feels  sure  there  has  been  some  accident,  perhaps  some 
precaution  omitted,  he  repeats  his  efforts.  All  the  old 
enthusiasm  is  rekindled  for  a  time;  there  is  the  same 
ardor,  and  satisfaction  in  the  work,  followed  by  the  same 
disappointment  and  recoil.  It  must  be  so :  his  energies 
are  misdirected.  He  is  acting  under  a  false  conception, 
according  to  appearance,  not  according  to  the  truth. 

Just  in  such  case  are  we.  In  dealing  with  the  world  as 
we  naturally  do,  we  are  treating  it  according  to  its  ap- 
pearance, and  not  according  to  the  truth.  We  are  acting 
under  a  false  conception.  We  have  enthusiasm,  and 
pleasure,  a  certain  satisfaction  in  our  pursuits,  and  a  firm 
expectation  of  success  :— But  what  is  the  result  ? 

For  true  success  there  must  be  right  knowledge.  We 
are  not  acting  according  to  the  truth  of  things. 

While  men  conceived  the  sky  as  revolving  round  the 
earth,  they  could  learn  much  respecting  tlie  appearances  it 
presented,  could  ascertain  many  laws,  and  by  means  of  that 
knowledge  accomplish  many  things  ;  predict  eclipses,  and 
conduct  short  voyages  out  of  sight  of  land.  But  for  the 
true  uses  of  astronomy,  it  is  necessary  to  recognise  the 
cause  of  the  appearance.  Fixing  their  thoughts  upon 
the  true  relations  of  the  universe  and  the  earth,  men  have 
a  power,  and  effect  results,  which  else  were  unattainable. 
And  for  the  true  uses  of  the  world  we  must  understand  it 
rightly.  To  recognise  the  cause  of  the  appearance,  and  to 
fix  our  thought  on  the  fact  of  man^s  redemption,  is  to  act 
by  the  world  as  being  spiritual,  to  treat  it  as  it  is. 

Again  :  Not  only  does  error  necessarily  lead  to  failure, 
but,  in  this  very  failure  is  the  remedy  for  the  error.  We 
learn  by  failing.  Starting  from  a  state  of  ignorance,  we 
necessarily  act  upon  false  conceptions  before  we  obtain 
true  ones,  and   are  delivered  from  our  ignorance  only 


M 


I 


/ 


through  the  evils  which  it  brings  upon  us.  All  human 
history  tells  the  same  tale  :  of  wisdom  learnt  through 
error ;  defects  remedied  through  loss.  The  practical  evils 
of  the  outer  life  make  us  aware  of  the  defect  within.  Save 
by  passing  through  mistakes  and  failures,  which  make  him 
feel  himself  wrong,  in  apprehension  or  in  feeling,  there  is 
not  true  good  for  man.  The  evils  which  he  inflicts  upon 
himself  teach  him  the  lessons  most  necessary  for  him  to 
know,  but  which  without  them  he  could  never  learn.  They 
are  necessary,  therefore,  and  good  in  their  evil.  Their 
goodness  is  in  their  felt  evilness.  Man's  errors  are  rightly 
wrong  ;  their  wrongness  is  their  rightness.  They  are 
wrong  for  the  results  he  aims  at ;  right  for  their  true  result, 
of  making  him  wiser,  and  curing  his  defects. 

Even  so  is  man  in  his  relation  to  the  eternal.  His  defect 
is  made  conscious  to  him  by  its  results.  He  learns  through 
error.  By  his  failure  he  is  forced  to  recognise  his  misap- 
prehension, and  to  know  that  the  world  whicli  he  treats  as 
physical  will  not  be  so  treated  unavenged.  Truly  the 
world  is  wrong  ;  but  it  is  riglitly  wrong.  Therein  the  true 
ends  which  it  subserves  for  man  are  perfectly  fulfilled  ; 
though  not  the  ends  which  he  proposes.  The  phenomenon 
is  wrong,  but  the  wrongness  of  the  phenomenon  is  the 
rightness  of  the  fact.  If  the  world  were  right  to  man,  his 
deadness  never  could  become  known  to  him,  never  be 
removed.  This  wrongness  and  evil  are  tiie  removal  of  his 
deadness ;  even  as  his  errors  respecting  material  things 
are  the  removal  of  his  ignorance. 

The  work  of  making  man  alive,  and  truly  Man,  we  feel 
as  evil.  It  is  evil  to  the  self  of  which  we  are  conscious. 
But  so  it  ought  to  be.  The  work  of  making  man  alive  is 
a  larger  good  than  our  capacity  can  grasp :  it  includes 
ourselves,  involves  our  being  made  different  from  that 
which  we  are.     Therefore  to  us  it  must  involve  the  feeling 


11  <ii 


284 


OP   WRONGNESS. 


[B.  IV. 


C.  IV.] 


OF  WRONGNESS. 


285 


of  evil.  That  is  no  more  than  that  a  child  should  find  the 
arrangements  of  its  home  bring  with  them  that  which  it 
feels  as  evil ;  that  being  often  felt  by  it  most  evil,  upon 
which  its  welfare  most  depends. 

Man  must  have  learnt  the  truth  respecting  himself  and 
the  world  through  error,  and  failure,  and  sin.  Only  so  is 
ignorance  corrected,  only  so  can  death  be  done  away. 
But  in  other  points  of  view,  also,  it  may  be  seen  that  the 
world  is  right  in  its  wrongness,  and  in  its  felt  evil.  Its 
very  nature  and  constitution  involve  its  evilness  to  us. 
Our  feeling  of  good  depends  on  that  of  evil,  pleasure  in- 
volves pain.  Without  the  consciousness  of  the  one  we 
could  not  know  the  other.  To  do  away  with  suffering,  and 
leave  that  which  we  call  enjoyment,  were  impossible.  The 
feeling  of  evil  is  a  chief  stimulus  of  all  our  energies,  lends 
its  vigor  to  life,  and  plays  a  main  part  in  the  raising  man 
from  barbarism  to  civilization.  It  could  not  be  foregone 
without  the  utter  ruin  of  social  life.  Man  lives  by  his 
wants.  In  truth,  we  might  well  believe  that  upon  pain 
and  want  this  physical  consciousness  is  founded  ;  that  the 
fundamental  idea  and  basis  of  this  life  is  pain,  and  not 
pleasure,  the  latter  springing  wholly  out  of  the  former, 
and  implying  for  its  possibility  the  previous  existence  of 
discomfort. 

But  whether  this  be  so  or  not,  it  is  certain  that  where 
there  is  a  self,  such  as  that  of  which  we  are  conscious,  there 
the  feeling  of  evil,  or  at  least  the  liability  to  it,  must  be. 
The  self  carries  the  consciousness  of  evil  with  it.  We  can- 
not conceive  self  apart  from  the  wish  to  avoid  and  to  get. 
Above  all,  there  must  be  the  feeling  of  evil  where  there  is 
the  self,  or  how  could  there  be  self-sacrifice  ?  And  how 
could  self-sacrifice  be  foregone ;  the  one  joy  and  beauty 
and  delight,  that  does  not  mock  the  name  ;  the  one  thing 
that  redeems  the  earth  and  makes  it  worthy  of  its  place  in 


a 


■'  f 


heaven  ?  How  can  there  be  self,  and  self-sacrifice  be  im- 
possible, until  Satan  has  triumphed  over  God  ?  Yet  this 
must  be,  if  we  separate  from  self  the  feeling  of  evil.  If 
nothing  painful  were  to  be  encountered,  nothing  to  be 
sacrificed,  how  could  there  be  at  once  self  and  love  ?* 

But  the  question  will  naturally  arise :  if  we  are  to  think 
thus  of  the  things  which  constitute  the  realities  of  this 
earthly  life,  will  not  this  lead  us  to  neglect  them,  and  let 
them  fall  into  disorder  ?  Why  should  we  attend  to  our 
business,  why  seek  to  advance  the  comfort  or  maintain  the 
order  of  life,  if  the  goodness  of  the  world  be  in  its  evil  ? 
A  little  reflection  will  show  that  a  regard  to  the  fact,  instead 
of  the  appearance,  would  be  as  advantageous  for  the  com- 
fort and  progress  of  the  earthly  life,  as  for  higher  objects. 
For,  whence  come  the  disorders  and  evils  of  that  life,  but 
from  self-seeking,  and  from  too  intense  an  eagerness  to 
possess  that  which  is  pleasant?  How  could  evil  result 
from  substituting  love  and  duty  as  the  prompters  to  activity, 
instead  of  ambition  and  desire  ?  That  were  surely  an  ex- 
cess of  caution,  which  should  dread  the  effects  of  too  great 
a  subordination  of  the  self-regard,  to  joy  in  the  work  of 
God.  What  evil  so  afflicts  us  now,  as  it  seems  to  some, 
above  all  other  ages,  as  the  frantic  desperation  of  all  men 
to  do  well  for  themselves  ?    Or  in  what  have  the  moralists 

*  Love  necessarily  involves  that  which  is  evil  to  the  self.  Love  is  in 
sacrifice.  But  where  love  is,  there  the  evil  to  the  self  is  no  more  felt  as  evil. 
Self-sacrifice  alone  is  joy.  This  is  all  man  wants  to  put  him  in  heaven. 
Perfect  love,  that  the  evil  to  the  self  be  no  more  felt  as  evil,  but  converted 
into  joy.  He  wants  Life  that  he  may  be  in  the  eternal  world ;  he  wants  the 
self  destroyed.  For  is  it  not  strange  to  thmk  what  lurks  in  our  thought  of 
heaven  ?  This  self  shall  be  in  us  still,  but  there  shall  be  no  possibility  of 
self-sacrifice :  there  shall  be  nothing  to  be  suffered.  This  is  why  the  de- 
voutest  men  can  hardly  find  food  for  enthusiasm  in  the  thought  of  heaven. 
They  ought  not.  That  heaven  is  not  so  good  as  earth ;  where  with  all  our 
shortcommgs  we  can  still  sacrifice  ourselves ;  can  still  endure  for  love. 


286 


OF  WRONGNESS. 


[B.  IV. 


C.  IV.] 


OF  WRONGISESS. 


287 


and  wisest  men  of  all  ages  so  agreed,  as  in  testifying  to  the 
want  of  something  which  should  moderate  the  violence  of 
the  passions?  Do  we  not,  also,  well  know  that  incom- 
parably less  toil,  freed  from  the  perverting  power  of  selfish- 
ness, would  ensure  a  far  more  rapid  progress,  than  is  ever 
likely  to  arise  from  the  conflict  of  private  interests  ? 

Is  not  virtue  the  true  wisdom?  Does  not  the  truest 
worldly  success  attend  it  in  the  end?  Do  not  crooked 
courses  lead  to  loss  and  ruin  ?  Yet  what  is  virtue,  but  the 
treating  these  things  as  of  no  value  in  themselves  ;  scorn- 
ing them,  casting  them  utterly  aside,  as  merest  trifles,  in 
obedience  to  the  fact  which  speaks  in  duty  ?  The  glory  of 
virtue  and  nobleness  is  that  they  treat  the  phenomena  as 
j)henomena :  they  are  true  to  the  nature  of  things  :  they 
are  success.  And  all  meanness,  vice,  and  hatefulness,  what 
are  they,  but  the  treating  these  things  that  we  like  and  fear 
with  an  undue  regard,  as  if  they  were  the  realities  ? 

Or  again  :  There  are  two  agencies  which  prompt  us  to 
action ;  our  desires  and  our  conscience :  the  stimulus  of 
pursuing  that  which  we  enjoy,  or  escaping  that  which  we 
feel  painful,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  sense  of  right  upon 
the  other.  Let  it  be  conceived  that  the  former  of  these 
were  done  entirely  away,  that  we  were  made  absolutely 
indifferent  to  pain  or  pleasure,  what  then  would  regulate 
our  actions  ?  What  would  remain  ?  Clearly  the  conscience. 
The  sense  of  right  alone  would  regulate  our  conduct. 
Would  the  world  be  worse  or  better,  if  men  were  moved  to 
action  only  by  the  conscience  ?  If  it  ^  be  asked  :  what 
should  we  do,  if  we  believed  that  all  the  things  we  feel  as 
evil  were  truly  good  ?  the  answer  is  evident ;  we  should 
do  right.  We  must  do  so.  The  belief  in  Christ  as  the 
Redeemer  of  the  world  saves  us  from  sin. 

But  in  truth,  this  doctrine  of  the  world,  so  far  from 


I 


;{ 


I 


I 


diverting  attention  from  the  practical  matters  of  our  daily 
life,  is  of  all  doctrines  the  most  practical.  It  exalts  these 
things  to  their  true  dignity,  raises  them  from  a  false  and 
most  fatal  depreciation.  It  affirms  for  them  a  value  not 
less,  but  infinitely  greater,  than  that  which  is  assigned  to 
them  ;  but  it  regards  the  fact  of  them,  and  not  the  seeming. 
These  things  are  not  merely  the  trivial  things  which  we 
suppose  ;  they  are  the  mode  in  which  the  eternal  presents 
itself  to  us.  We  slight  them  and  do  them  wrong,  give 
them  not  half  the  heed  which  they  demand.  These  are  the 
very  facts  of  the  eternal  world,  besides  which  there  are 
none  other.  These  are  the  facts  with  which  our  concern 
lies— our  sole  concern  ;  the  fact  of  these  daily,  ordinary 
duties.  The  present  is  the  Eternal.  Vainly  do  we  fancy 
to  ourselves  an  eternal  in  the  future.  The  eternal  is  now, 
or  it  is  never.  The  spiritual  world,  and  the  material,  come 
not  in  succession  even  to  us ;  they  coexist.  They  are  fact 
and  phenomenon.  The  material  is  the  appearance  of  the 
spiritual.  Why  we  misuse  the  world  so  much  is,  that  we 
estimate  it  too  low.  We  do  not  see  enough  in  it,  therefore 
we  so  abuse  it.  More  rash  and  reckless  far  than  he  who 
should  use  gold  for  brass,  we  squander  Heaven's  own 
wealth  as  if  'twere  merely  gold. 

There  is  a  fatal  practical  defect  in  the  belief  that  the 
physical  is  one  fact  and  the  spiritual  another,  which  may 
go  far  to  account  for  the  apparently  incurable  errors  of 
our  lives.  Disjoining  thus  the  one  reality,  we  can  rightly 
apprehend  neither  world,  the  apparent  nor  the  true,  still 
less  rightly  act  by  them.  Either  we  regard  the  present  as 
merely  physical,  a  matter  for  enjoyment,  for  doing  the  best 
for  ourselves  ;  or,  if  we  seek  to  regard  the  spiritual,  it  is 
as  another  different  world,  drawing  our  thoughts  away 
from  that  which  is  now  around  us,  and  mostly,  as  pertain- 
ing to  the  future.    So  we  vibrate  between  a  worldly  regard 


288 


OF  WRONGNESS. 


[B.   IV. 


to  this  world,  and  a  spiritual  disregard  to  it;  with  what 
results  we  see.  There  is  a  strife  between  our  religious  and 
our  earthly  life.  But  the  true  regard  to  the  world  is  a 
spiritual  regard  to  it ;  a  regard  to  the  fact.  Not  two 
things,  but  one,  are  the  religious  and  the  earthly  life  :  the 
one  the  fact,  the  other  the  form  ;  answering  to  the  true  re- 
lation of  the  eternal  and  the  temporal.  So  grows  our  life 
into  one  harmonious  whole;  the  living  fountain  within 
springing  up,  and  filling  the  else  empty  cisterns  of  this  life 
of  forms.  Not  foreign  to  our  piety  nor  deadening  it,  but 
its  very  life  and  being,  are  the  tasks  of  our  earthly  course, 
the  routine  of  our  daily  work.  Seeing  these  as  they  are, 
regarding  the  fact  of  them  in  man's  redemption,  they  sepa- 
rate us  not  from  God,  but  draw  us  to  Him  ;  they  bind  us 
to  Christ,  whose  life  and  death  alone  enable  us  to  under- 
stand them,  fill  them  with  all  their  meaning,  make  them  to 
be  that  which  they  are  to  us.    To  us  to  live  is  Christ. 

But,  as  we  naturally  think  of  the  world,  not  only  do  our 
passions  and  our  self-seeking  pervert  our  actions  and  draw 
us  aside  from  right ;  even  our  best  impulses  and  desires 
lead  us  astray.  Nothing  has  been  more  productive  of 
mischief  than  ill-directed  zeal  for  good.  We  snatch  prema- 
turely at  results,  impatient  of  error  and  delay  ;  and  so  we 
mar  the  working  of  beneficent  laws,  and  fall  into  errors 
which  can  be  redeemed  only  through  the  most  terrible  con- 
vulsions. This  comes  from  our  want  of  faith,  from  not 
seeing  that  God  is  glorified,  and  that  His  glory  can  suffer 
no  diminution.  On  us  it  can  depend,  only,  whether  God 
shall  be  glorified  in  our  willing  action.  Not  by  securing 
certain  results  rather  than  others,  but  by  simple  right- 
doing  in  spite  of  all  consequences,  alone,  can  we  subserve 
His  glory.  He  does  reign,  and  His  kingdom  ruleth  over 
all.  The  perfectness  of  Eternal  Love  is  here  and  now.  No 


c.  IV.] 


OF  WRONGNESS. 


289 


care  of  ours  can  take  that  which  we  feel  as  evil  out  of  the 
world,  nor  ought  to  do  so.  Man's  salvation  is  in  it.  Thus 
seeing,  we  can  keep  our  action  straight,  level  to  the  true 
line  of  uprightness,  and  are  delivered  from  the  evils  which 
flow  from  attempting  to  do  good  unrighteously.  For  we 
leave  off  acting  for  results.  Results  belong  to  God.  We 
know  not  what  is  good,  even  in  the  narrowest  sense  of 
securing  our  own  greatest  pleasure;  mucli  less  what  is 
good  for  man.  For  the  true  goodness  of  this  world  is 
neither  enjoyment,  nor  virtue,  nor  any  other  thing  that  we 
call  good,  but  that  which  is  :  man  being  made  alive  from 
death,  and  raised  to  a  new  being. 


13 


BOOK    V. 


DIALOGUES. 

Htias. — ^You  set  out  upon  the  same  principles  that  Academics,  Cartesians,  and  the 
like  sects  usually  do;  and  for  a  long  time  it  looked  as  if  you  were  advancing  their  philo- 
sophical scepticism  ;  hut  in  the  end  your  conclusions  are  directly  opposite  to  theirs. 

T'HiLOsrous. — You  see  the  water  of  yonder  fountain,  how  it  is  forced  upwards  to  a  cer- 
tain height ;  at  which  it  breaks  and  falls  hack  into  the  basin  from  whence  it  rose  :  its 
ascent  as  well  as  descent  proceeding  from  the  same  uniform  law  or  principle  of  gravita- 
tion. Just  so,  the  same  principles  which  at  first  view  lead  to  scepticism,  pursued  to  a 
certain  point,  bring  men  back  to  common  sense. 


[291] 


*'■, 


The  following  Dialogues  are  expomtory,  not  controversial.  They  do  not 
profess  to  answer  all  objections  to  the  views  that  have  been  proposed, 
but  are  designed  ratlier  to  exhibit  them  in  relation  with  a  wider  circle  of 
thought.  To  a  large  extent,  arguments  already  suggested  are  urged  under 
fresh  aspects,  and  with  the  view  of  guarding  against  misapprehension  the 
same  essential  conception  is  presented  in  varied  modes  of  expression  and 
illustration.  Each  of  the  Dialogues,  however,  embraces  subjects  not  pre^ 
Tioufidy  treated. 


(M2) 


Li 


DIALOGUE    I. 

READER  AND  WRITER. 

B,  If  I  have  understood  you  rightly,  what  you  say  rests 
upon  this  principle  :  That  the  defective  state  of  man 
causes  our  feeling  not  to  correspond  with  the  truth  of 
things,  so  that  we  can  only  understand  aright  either  our- 
selves or  the  world  by  remembering  that  man  is  wanting 
in  life. 

W,  It  is  so.  I  say  that  all  defect,  perceived  as  abso- 
lutely existing,  apart  from  us,  proves  itself  by  its  very 
nature  to  be  due  to  man's  own  condition  ;  implies  defect 
in  relation  to  him. 

B.  Your  position,  I  grant,  is  a  reasonable  one  to  con- 
sider :  but  there  remain  many  grave  objections.  I  will 
not  mention  the  strangeness  of  the  idea,  and  the  alteration 
it  demands  in  our  way  of  thinking.  That  may  be  due  only 
to  its  novelty.  It  may  be  as  natural  to  conceive  of  defect 
within  us,  as  without  us— of  ourselves  as  being  conscious 
of  defect,  as  to  conceive  the  opposite— when  once  we  are 
familiar  with  the  thought.  It  would  be  unfair  to  press  you 
with  that  as  an  argument,  which  may  rest  only  upon 
custom.  But  let  me  mention,  first,  an  objection  which 
should  weigh  much  with  every  reasonable  man.  Do  yon 
not  put  yourself  in  opposition  to  the  universal  opinions  of 
mankind,  and  give  direct  contradiction  to  sentiments  which 
have  all  the  authority  that  human  conviction  can  bestow? 

[293) 


294 


DIALOGUE  I. 


And  this,  not  on  some  few  points  in  which  we  might 
expect  that  error  should  be  detected,  but  in  relation  to  the 
entire  scope  of  human  thought.  Is  it  not  most  unlikely 
that  you  are  right  ? 

W.  If  the  case  were  as  you  have  stated,  I  should  agree 
with  you.     I  should  think  any  deductions  which  one  man 
might  make,  however  supported  by  argument,  to  be  of  little 
value,  if  they  were  in  opposition  to  the  real  convictions 
of  mankind.     Understand  me  better.     All  my  confidence 
is  placed  on  the  very  ground  on  which  you  would  have  it 
rest.     If  I  have  not  uttered  the  true  convictions  of  man, 
and  have  not  on  my  side  the  affirmations  of  all  who  are 
most  worthy  to  be  believed,  I  would  wish  everything  un- 
said.    I  am  a  learner,  not  a  teacher.     All  that  may  seem 
new  I  have  learned  from  the  living  lips  of  men,  or  from 
pages  on  which  man's  life  throbs  inextinguishably.    I  have 
not  said  one  thing  that  you  may  not  find  better  said  before, 
or  gather,  fresh  with  the  dew  of  simplicity,  from  the  way- 
side as  you  walk.     Mine  has  been  an  humble  task  :  to 
listen  what  men  say,  and  let  it  sink  into  my  heart,  and 
repeat  it  to  themselves  :  the  child's  part,  who  may  some- 
times see  what  his  elders  overlook,  because  of  his  conscious 
Ignorance.     For  men,  sometimes,  in  their  great  progress, 
seeing  so  many  things,  have  not  time  to  attend  to  all,  and 
may  suffer  old  ideas  to  remain  in  their  minds,  without 
observing  that  they  are  incompatible  with  their  better 
knowledge.    Listening  U)  the  large  discourse  of  humanity, 
with  an  humble  heart,  and  willing  to  be  taught,  as  became 
one  so  little  worthy  to  do  more  than  the  scholar's  part  I 
have  heard  it  affirm  all  the  things  that  I  have  said.  '  I 
have  heard  and  believed,  for  they  seemed  to  me  true  ;  and 
I  could  not  help  seeing  that  they  formed  a  consistent 
whole,  and  that  men  need  not  contradict  one  another  any 
more.    For  who  does  not,  in  his  heart,  affirm  nature  to  be 


DIALOGUE   I. 


295 


living  and  active  ;  when  has  it  been  otherwise  spoken  of  by 
man,  speaking  his  true  thought  ?    And  in  what  age  of  the 
world  has  not  a  deadness  been  recognised  in  man  ?  who  is 
not  conscious  of  the  sad  truth  in  his  very  soul  ?     But  that 
there  is  a  deadness  in  man  and  that  nature  is  not  dead,  is 
all  that  I  have  said.     It  is  not  I  that  say  it,  but  man. 
These  two  truths  had  not  been  brought  into  relation.    For 
if  there  is  a  deadness  in  ourselves,  how  could  we  but  per- 
ceive a  deadness  in  nature,  and  become  conscious  of  it,  to 
our  wonder  and  distress,  when  science  taught  us  to  ob- 
serve ?    And  who  does  not  say  that  we  are  in  the  eternal 
world  ;  that  God  and  all  spiritual  being,  if  there  be  any 
such,  is  here  and  now  present ;  and  that  these  things  are 
only  hidden  from  us  by  our  inability  to  see  ?  the  present 
state  of  man  making  them  to  be  to  us  as  if  they  were  not. 
I  bow  to  the  assertion  :  it  is  true.     We  are  in  the  eternal 
world  ;  the  very  actual  world  in  which  we  are,  that  is  the 
eternal.     And  when  I  hear  the  men  of  science  say  that  all 
the  things  which  sense  and  thought  present  to  us  are  but 
phenomena,  and  that  the  very  fact  of  being  is  unknown, 
how  can  I    help   recognising    here   that  which  I  have 
assented  to  before  ?    These  things  must  be  but  phenom- 
ena, for  they  are  not  the  eternal,  they  are  not  that  world 
in  which  we  are,  they  are  the  world  in  which  we  seem, 
and  feel  ourselves,  to  be.    And  when,  again,  I  hear  it  said 
that  these  phenomena  are  the  realities  of  our  life,  the  only 
things  with  which  we  have  to  do  :  when  it  is  affirmed  that 
these  things,  which  are  not  the  very  fact  of  being,  are  the 
facts  to  us  ;  how  can  I  help  recalling  what  I  had  been 
taught  before,  that  there  was  a  deadness  in  man  ?  how 
could  I  help  seeing  that  a  life  in  that  whioh  is  not  the  very 
fact  of  being  is  not  the  very  fact  of  life  ? 

And  I  have  read  no  book  to  which  man  has  confirmed 
the  meed  of  immortality,  I  have  conversed  witli  no  pure 


296 


DIALOGUE  I. 


DIALOGUE  I. 


297 


and  truthful  heart,  that  did  not  affirm  to  me  the  unreality 
of  earthly  things  ;  that  these  things,  which  are  real  to 
me,  strictly  are  not,  but  are  shows  and  forms,  which  to 
trust  is  to  be  deceived.  How  could  I  help  seeing  that  I 
needed  to  be  more  ;  that  the  things  which  are  but  shows 
might  be  but  shows  to  me,  the  things  that  are  truly  real 
be  the  realities  ?  How  could  I  not  perceive  that  things 
ought  to  be  known  and  felt  by  me  as  they  are,  and  not  as 
they  are  not  ?  And  when  I  heard  almost  all  men  affirm 
another  being  for  man,  in  which  these  things  should  be  to 
him  no  more  as  they  are  now,  but  he  should  be  in  the 
eternal  world  ;  how  could  I  fail  to  see  in  that  a  deliver- 
ance from  the  deadness,  a  life  to  that  which  is,  phenomena 
being  no  more  realities  !  *  Accuse  me  not  of  arrogance.' 
How  could  I  believe  the  true  things  tliat  men  say,  if  I  be- 
lieved not  as  I  do  ? 

R,  You  would  imply,  that  in  these  things  the  true  utter- 
ances of  man  are  found,  and  that  the  statements  which  are 
inconsistent  with  these  are  only  inconsistencies,  not  con- 
tradictions. 

W,  Even  so.  The  apparent  contradictions  are  seen  not 
to  be  truly  such,  when  the  hurry  and  excitement  of  our 
life  subside,  and  we  have  time  quietly  to  look  into  our 
thoughts,  and  see  what  we  really  know.  For  men  truly 
know  much  more  than  they  are  aware  of,  if  they  would 
only  bring  the  knowledge,  which  lies  scattered  in  isolated 
portions,  into  its  right  relations.  Opinions  which  seem 
opposed  often  need  only  to  be  regarded  in  connexion,  to 
give  to  each  other  mutual  explanation  and  support. 

R.  For  instance,  that  the  world  is  physical,  or  consists 
of  inert  matter,  means  only  that  it  is  so  to  our  feeling  or 
consciousness.  We  perceive  it  so,  and  have  been  obliged 
to  draw  corresponding  inferences  ;  which  is  an  essential 
part  of  your  representation  ? 


I 


W.  Yes.  But  one  chief  test  of  an  opinion  is  that  it 
should  embrace,  and  draw  into  itself,  all  the  opposing 
views,  and  show  each  one  to  have  been  necessary  in  its 
place  and  order  ;  so  presenting  the  history  of  human 
thought  as  a  true  living  development.  What,  for  in- 
stance, so  confirms  the  Copernican  interpretation  of  the 
heavens,  as  its  explaining  the  order  of  men's  thoughts  re- 
specting astronomy  ? 

R.  I  grant  that  if,  by  a  condition  aflfecting  man,  our 
perception  of  the  world  is  modified,  and  caused  to  be  of  an 
inert  instead  of  an  active  existence,  men  must  have  con- 
structed science  as  it  is,  and  ought  to  find  such  an  inter- 
pretation of  it  as  you  suggest.  If  the  absolute  being  in 
nature  be  spiritual,  and  man  be  defective,  doubtless  investi- 
gation ought  to  make  him  aware  of  those  facts  by  such  a 
process  as  you  say.  But  this  brings  me  to  another  remark, 
which  is  not  so  much  an  objection  to  the  truth  of  your  idea, 
as  to  its  value.  What  claim  to  certainty  can  any  such 
speculations  possess  ?  Innumerable  solutions  of  these  prob- 
lems have  been  put  forth,  each  one  announcing  itself  as 
successful,  but  all,  as  you  necessarily  imply,  erroneous. 
Why  should  the  last  have  any  better  fate  than  its  predeces- 
sors ?  Is  not  the  prudent  caution,  with  which  all  such 
attempts  are  now  regarded  rather  as  interesting  amuse- 
ments than  as  serious  work,  justified,  and  as  much  so  in 
your  case  as  in  others  ? 

W.  Far  be  it  from  me  to  attempt  to  exalt  myself  by  a 
depreciation  of  others  ;  any  speculations  of  mine  are  of  no 
more  value  than  the  idlest  of  the  past.  Nor  do  I  enter 
into  any  competition  with  those  men  of  gigantic  ability, 
who  have  reared  speculation  to  a  height  which  lias  demon- 
strated to  all  future  time  at  once  her  power  and  her  in- 
capacity. If  I  claim  for  my  work  a  more  permanent  value, 
it  is  precisely  because  it  is  of  so  much  humbler  pretensions. 
13* 


298 


DIALOGUE  I. 


I  precent  to  you  no  speculation,  no  attempt  to  erect  man's 
intellect  into  a  judge  of  the  universe.     I  present  to  you, 
indeed,  nothing  of  my  own.     But  this  I  say  :  that  man  is 
the  Interpreter  of  Nature  as  well  as  her  servant,  and 
that  by  science  he  has  interpreted  her.    It  would  be  a 
false  modesty  which  should  prevent  my  insisting  on  the 
value  of  the  work  that  man  has  done.     What  part  have 
I  in  it  that  I  should  pretend  it  to  be  less  than  it  is  ?    I 
say,  that  science  demonstrates  that  the  perceived  inertness 
is  due  to  man  :  demonstrates  it  as  certainly,  more  certainly 
(if  demonstration  admitted  of  degrees),  as  that  the  motion 
perceived  in  the  heavens  is  the  earth's.    If  any  man  will 
say  that  there  exists  an  absolute  negation,  I  will  allow 
that,  to  him,  I  cannot  prove  my  fundamental  position,  and 
consent  that  the  doubt  shall  remain  ;  but  even  then,  I  will 
not  admit  it  more  doubtful  than  all  things  else  must  be  to 
him, 

B-.  By  science,  you  would  say,  the  conditions  of  the  prob- 
lem are  altered,  and  that  which  was  impossible  made 
possible.  If  the  inertness  must  be  ascribed  to  man,  the 
statement  that  he  has  not  truly  life  is  but  another  mode  of 
expressing  the  same  thing.  You  would  make  the  entire 
position  a  question  of  science,  not  of  speculation. 

W,  That  is  what  I  would  do.  I  only  ask  the  question, 
Science  answers  it.  Thus  would  be  attained  that  certainty 
and  demonstrativeness  in  philosophy,  which  has  been  so 
earnestly  sought,  and  latterly  pronounced  so  hopeless.  All 
men  agree  in  scientific  truth,  bowing  to  evidence  not  to  be 
questioned.  Why  should  not  all  men  agree  that  the  per- 
ceived inertness  is  man's  ?  It  is  a  question  of  science.  It 
cannot  remain  in  doubt ;  it  must  be  decided  one  way  or 
the  other. 

K  That  question  certainly  alters  somewhat  the  scope  of 
philosophic  inquiry.    If  the  inertness  be  demonstrably  due 


DIALOGUE  I. 


299 


st.ated?  IS  It  not  only  an  opinion  still,  although  we  may 
grant  that  the  opposite  may  be  reduced  to  a  verbal  con- 
tradiction  ? 

W,  I  have  tried  to  give  demonstration  of  it ;  but  the 
question  must  rest  with  each  man's  thoughts.  I  would 
ra  her  ask  than  answer  it.  I  cannot  doubt  what  any  ma,  \ 
wil  reply,  who  will  ask  himself:  I  cannot  expect  or  wisK 
that  any  man  should  suffer  me  to  make  reply  for  him.  Trv 
yourself  to  conceive  the  case ;  the  inaction  of  nature,  as  it 
IS  to  us,  IS  a5.o?z.fe;^that  it  acts  as  it  is  acted  upon  is  the 
very  proof  of  its  absolute  inaction.  But  surelv  absolute 
inaction  must  distinguish  that  which  is  not  from  that 
which  IS  :  phenomenon  from  fact.  Nature  cannot  at  once 
BE,  and  be  absolutely  inactive. 

i?.  Of  course  nature  acts,  in  some  sense;  no  one  will 
dispute  that.  But  may  not  nature  act  physically,  and  so 
le  physically,  and  yet  be  inert  in  the  other  sense  of  not  oriff- 
mating  action  ?  The  earth  ..  g,  acts  in  the  sense  of 
attracting. 

W.  Being  and  acting  cannot  be  dissevered,  even  in 
seemmg.    To  be  physical  and  to  act  pliysically  are  the 
same  ;  bnt  the  being  physical  is  itself  being  inert,  or  not 
acting.     You  have  here  noticed  a  resnlt  of  our  endeavor 
to  mamtam  inert  exists.    We  are  compelled  at  .nee  to 
assert  acaon,  and  to  deny  it.    The  phenomenon  must  act 
phenomenally,  or  appear  to  act,  or  else  it  could  not  appear 
to  be.    So  a  phenomenon  which  is  felt  as  reality  must  im- 
press  us  as  if  acting,  and  yet,  when  it  is  examined,  be  found 
to  be  inert.    Thus  it  is  discovered  not  to  be  the  reality  we 
feel  It.    Our  perception  of  this  passive  action  demonstrates 
an  existence  not  passive.    It  is  curious  to  see  how  a  little 
difference  in  words  enables  us  to  overlook  an  inconsistency 
m  thought.    We  could  not  say  the  cnrth  act..,  and  yet  does 


300 


DIALOGUE  I. 


DIALOGUE  I. 


301 


not  act ;  but  we  can  say,  the  earth  is  inert  and  yet  acts. 
Is  not  this  a  penalty  we  pay  for  the  advantage  of  using 
words  of  diverse  origin  ?  Physical  things  are  felt  by  us  as 
acting,  but  do  not  truly  act. 

J?.  Do  not  you  forget  that  the  inertness  of  matter  is  de- 
nied by  many  eminent  men :  M.  Comte,  for  example,  and 
Mr.  J.  S.  Mill  ? 

W.  By  no  means.    I  agree  with  them  entirely  that  the 
existence  which  acts  upon  us  is  not  inert.     I  claim  them, 
indeed,  as  authorities  for  that  position.     But  I  find  their 
statement  incomplete.    They  do  not  sufficiently  observe 
that  this  existence,  which  they  truly  say  is  not  inert,  is  felt 
as  inert  by  us.    That  fact  they  do  not  account  for.    It  is 
the  turning  point  of  the  whole.    Why  is  the  not-inert  inert 
to  us  ?    Is  not  the  question  as  simple  as  this  :  Why  is  the 
not-moving  moving  to  us?  or,  why  is  the  earth,  which  is 
not  at  rest,  at  rest  to  us  ?    Further,  I  tliink  it  is  a  mistake 
to  speak  of  that  which  is  affirmed  to  be  not-inert  under  the 
name  of  matter.     It  confuses  language.     Matter  means,  if 
anything,  surely  that  which  is  inert ;  tlie  phenomenon  or 
that  which  we  feel  to  be.    Surely  those  writers  would  not 
assert  that  a  phenomenoii  acts  ;  still  less  that  the  phenom- 
enon is  not  material.    In  brief,  I  find  nothing  so  simple  as 
that  nature,  thwgh  it  cannot  he  inert,  should  be  inert  to  us, 
because  the  ^  essence  of  it  is  unknown.     A  phenomenon 
is  inert  of  course.     It  is  the  same  thing  to  say  that  man 
knows  only  phenomena,  and  to  say  that  he  introduces  in- 
ertness into  nature. 

a.  When  put  in  this  abstract  form,  the  argument  seems 
more  powerful  in  words  than  in  fact.  It  must  be  granted 
that  inertness  is  inaction,  that  inaction  is  a  negation,  that 
a  negation  cannot  exist.  Also  when  you  point  out  that 
the  negation  which  we  feel  in  nature  is  absolute,  I  must 
admit  that  it  cannot  truly  be  as  we  feel  it ;  for  absolute 


(I 


inaction  is  absolute  not-being.  But  all  this  rather  makes 
out  a  case  for  inquiry  than  establishes  anything.  There  is 
more  interest  in  the  moral  argument,  for  I  perceive  it  is  a 
question  of  practical  life,  and  not  of  speculation. 

W.  I  am  glad  you  feel  it  to  be  so.  We  must  give  the 
proposition  its  scientific,  demonstrative  basis,  and  so  con- 
nect it  with  inertia  and  phenomena  and  such  unfamiliar 
terms.  Positions  which  lay  claim  to  scientific  proof  (which 
has  never  been  held  a  disadvantage)  must  in  part  be  treated 
so.  But  the  sooner  that  ground  can  be  left  the  better ;  nor 
need  it,  indeed,  be  tarried  on  ;  for  the  very  same  argument, 
which  thus  appeals  to  the  intellect,  addresses  itself  also  to 
the  other  faculties  of  man.  How  could  nature  possibly  be 
what  it  is  to  us,  if  it  were  in  fact  so  little  as  our  science 
represents  it  ?  Nature  cannot  be  dead  ;  it  was  called  Na- 
ture because  it  was  felt  to  be  living.  But  our  science  seems 
dead  enough.  Are  we  not  filled  with  impatience  by  its  in- 
cessant multiplication  of  dead  forces?  Has  not  almost 
every  one  some  contrivance  in  his  mind  for  reconciling  his 
science  to  his  feelings  ?  The  denial  of  the  inertness  of 
matter  may  be  such.  Do  not  others  say  that  all  physical 
causation  is  the  direct  act  of  the  Creator  ?*  Others,  that 
physical  causation  is  not  efficient  cause,  but  only  connexion 
in  reason  ?t  Do  not  all  these  things  mean  that  nature  must 
be  more  than  it  is  felt  to  be  by  us  ?  For  if  causation  be 
God's  direct  act,  why  is  it  not  to  us  as  it  is  ?  Why  does 
God's  direct  act  affect  us  as  inert  force  ?  If  it  be  truly  a 
connexion  in  reason,  why  is  it  to  us  a  connexion  by  a  passive 
unreasoning  necessity  ?  What  causes  nature  to  be  to  us 
different  from  what  it  is  ?  This  I  seek  to  know.  If  it  be 
not  want  of  life  in  man,  what  is  it  ?  Of  all  tilings  surely 
this  is  one  of  the  most  important  for  us  to  know  ;  must  be 


♦  Dr.  Carpenter. 


t  Rev.  Baden  Powell. 


302 


DIALOGUE   I. 


one  of  tlic  easiest  to  learn.  If  nature  is  more  than  it  is 
felt  to  be  by  us,  do  not  we  introduce  defect  into  it  ?  And 
if  the  fact  of  nature's  laws  be  God's  immediate  act,  is  not 
God's  act  spiritual  ?  It  cannot  be  meant  that  God  first 
makes  inert  things,  and  then  moves  them  mechanically. 
Nor  can  it  be  meant,  that  there  are  these  mechanical  pro- 
cesses, and  yet  no  true  causation  in  tliem.  It  must  be,  that 
a  fact  not  truly  mechanical  is  felt  by  us  as  if  it  were  so.  I 
find  all  men  virtually  assert  nature  spiritual,  but  none 
reflect  that  it  must  be  the  defect  of  man  that  makes  it 
otherwise. 

R,  We  will  leave  this  question  of  inertness,  which  still 
remains  somewhat  abstract,  and  come  to  matters  more 
practical.  Be  our  state  what  it  may,  can  we  be  other  than 
we  are,  while  we  are  in  this  world  ?  In  this  state,  man  is 
obliged  to  deal  with  physical  things— phenomenal,  if  you 
like  to  call  them  so.  Must  we  not  take  up  our  position  as 
it  is  ?    Perhaps  hereafter  we  shall  be  diff'erent. 

W.    Let  me  first  remark   that  I  think   the  question 
whether  nature  truly  be  inert  or  active  ;  whether  there  be 
in  it  passive  necessity,  or  Love— true  actual  Being  and 
Life,  instead  of  deadness — can  seem  abstract  only  by  my 
fault.     If  I  could  speak  of  it  worthily,  the  words  would 
glow  with  intensest  warmth,  and  kindle  a  fire  in  every 
soul.     If  this  be  the  fact,  is  not  poetry  infinitely  surpassed  ; 
surpassed  as  God  surpasses  man?     What  paltry  fictions 
all  her  inventions  are,  compared  with  the  unimaginable 
truth.     Is  it  possible  that  we  have  thought  man's  fancy 
should  add  beauty  to  God's  work,  exalt  His  world  to  a 
more  illustrious  grace?     Poor  reparation  has  the  poet 
made  to  nature  for  the  life  of  which  man  has  robbed  her. 
Poor,  and  yet  man's  best,  and  willingly  received.     But 
no— not  his  best.    Not  his  best  homage  to  the  being  God 
has  made  is  rendered  by  his  fancy,  but  by  his  steadfast 


DIALOGUE  L 


303 


pursuit  of  fact.  Not  his  best  worship  in  fictitious  rever- 
ence, but  in  sober  learning  of  the  truth.  Science  is  the  in- 
terpreter of  nature ;  gazes  into  her  eyes  and  reads  her  heart. 
Knowledge,  not  fancy,  shows  her  living.  We  clothe  nature 
with  a  life  and  beauty  from  our  own  souls,  raising  her  to 
undeserved  renown  I  Let  the  thought  perish,  and  be  no 
more  remembered  to  our  shame !  Science  henceforth  joins 
hands  with  poetry ;  they  are  one :  the  image  loses  itself  in 
the  reality ;  the  shadow  fades  from  our  regard,  for  our 
hands  grasp  the  substance.  Nature  is  living  ;  holy  ;  has 
the  life  to  which  man  shall  be  raised.  The  finger  pressed 
no  more  on  her  mute  lips,  once  mute,  but  vocal  now  with 
heaven's  own  music ;  the  secret  uttered,  the  sole  secret, 
only  to  man  unknown  :  that  Life  is  holiness,  that  holiness 
is  freedom,  that  freedom  is  necessity,  that  necessity  is 
Love.  God's  secret,  the  secret  of  being,  which  not  to 
know  is  death.  Wise  poet-heart,  to  strive,  though  with 
-what  vain  endeavor  and  pitiful  shortcoming,  to  maintain  a 
life  in  nature,  a  sympathy,  a  love,  a  voice  to  human  souls. 
The  tardier  science  doth  approve  thee  true,  and  crown  thee 
king. 

But  did  you  ever,  with  great  toil  and  patience,  using 
both  hands  and  all  your  ingenuity,  straighten  out  a  bent 
spring  ?  And  when  you  had  at  length  achieved  the  task, 
and  seemed  to  see  your  labor  finished,  did  the  unsubdued 
twist  renew  itself,  and  the  whole  thing  spring  back  exactly 
as  it  was  at  first  ?  Just  so  do  you  serve  me.  You  invite 
me  to  begin  my  whole  task  again  ;  all  that  I  have  said  is 
the  answer  to  your  question. 

R.  Yet  I  must  repeat  it.  While  we  are  in  this  world, 
must  not  our  business  be  with  physical  things  ?  Must  we 
not  accept  our  life  as  God  has  ordained  it  ? 

W,  Assuredly  we  must.  That  is  what  I  wish  above  all 
to  do  :  to  learn  what  our  life  is,  that  as  God  has  ordained 


304 


DIALOGUE  I. 


DIALOGUE  I. 


305 


it,  and  not  under  a  false  notion  of  my  own,  I  may  accept 
it.     Let  me  remind  you  wliat  I  say.     Tlie  world  is  more 
than  it  is  felt  to  be  by  us  :  it  is  the  spiritual  world.     This 
alone  we  truly  have  to  do  with,  for  it  alone  truly  exists. 
We  feel  it  as  we  do,  because  of  man's  defectiveness.     To 
think  of  it  aright,  we  must  (as  we  most  easily  can,  most 
naturally  do),  think  of  it  as  being  more  than  merely  cor- 
respondent to  our  impressions  ;  remembering  that  we— not 
are  to  be— but  are  in  the  eternal  world,  and  that  the  fact 
with  which  we  have  to  do  is  the  raising  man  to  his  true 
Life.    Perhaps  you  decline  to  adopt  this  view  ;  but  at  leas; 
be  just.     Do  not  say  it  is  difficult,  or  unlike  things  that  we 
commonly  admit.    What  is  more  constantly  our  habit  than 
to  remember  that  our  apprehensions  are  inadequate,  and 
that  the  truth  of  things  differs  from  our  impressions  ?     Do 
we  not  always  add  in  our  thoughts  to  that  which,  strictly 
speaking,  we  perceive  ?     When  we  look  at  a  chair,  for  ex- 
ample, do  we  suppose  it  to  correspond  to  the  impression 
on  our  sense  ?     Clearly  not ;  we  see  only  parts  of  it :  such 
a  chair  could  not  be ;  we  infer,  and  conceive  as  existing, 
that  which  is  not  to  our  sight.     We  supply  something 
wanting,  the  unseen  portions  of  the  chair,  and  then  the 
thing  is  possible.     What  more  easy  than  to  do  the  same  by 
nature,  to  add  to  it  in  our  thought  something  that  is  want- 
ing in  our  impression  ;  to  remember  that  our  perception 
implies  an  existence  unperceived,  that  the  true  existence  is 
active,  not  unacting :  living  and  not  dead  ? 
B.  I  cannot  say  that  is  difficult. 

W,  Then,  if  you  do  that,  you  distinguish  between  that 
which  truly  acts  on  you,  and  that  which  seems  to  do  so. 
You  understand  that  your  feeling  yourself  to  be  in  an  inert 
world  is  a  false  feeling  on  your  part. 

R,  That  is,  I  consider  that  which  exists  to  be  very  un- 
like that  of  which  I  have  the  impression. 


i 


W,  And  the  cause  of  this  difference  of  your  impression 
from  the  truth  is  a  condition  of  your  own,  which  you  share 
with  all  men.  In  considering  the  relation  of  the  whole 
human  race  to  the  existence  which  is  present  to  them,  you 
have  regard  to  the  condition  of  the  whole  human  race. 
You  reflect  that  man  is  defective — that  all  men  are  so — 
and  that  all  therefore  perceive  the  world  as  defective. 

R,  This  may  be  very  well  in  theory,  but  the  practical 
difficulty  remains  : — that  the  world  we  feel  and  know  does 
not  exist.    How  can  we  believe  it  ? 

W.  We  feel  these  material  things  :  we  know  them  to 
exist  ?    We  are  quite  sure  of  it  ? 

R.  Yes. 

W.  An  ignorant  man  feels  that  he  knows  many  things ; 
he  is  quite  sure  they  are  true  ;  that  the  sun  moves,  or  that 
smoke  rises  because  it  is  light. 

R.  True  :  the  more  ignorant  the  man,  the  more  sure  he 
feels. 

W,  An  ignorant  man  feels  himself  to  know,  but  the 
things  he  knows  are  not  true.     Is  that  knowledge  ? 

R.  No.     Tliat  is  ignorance. 

W,  Suppose  that  we  feel  certain  things  to  exist,  but  the 
things  we  feel  do  not  exist :  what  would  that  be  ? 

R.  It  would  be,  in  respect  to  our  life  and  being,  as  ig- 
norance is  in  respect  to  knowledge  :  an  absence  of  it.  I 
perceive  the  argument,  but  you  have  to  make  good  that  the 
things  we  feel  to  exist  do  not  exist. 

W,  That  cannot  be  difficult.  How  can  a  world  answer- 
ing to  our  inadequate  feeling  and  apprehension  exist? 
That  which  has  not  action  is  thereby  proved  not  to  be  it- 
self an  existence,  but  an  appearance  produced  by  the  action 
on  us  of  something  else.  A  world  such  as  we  feel  can  no 
more  truly  be,  than  a  chair  could  stand  erect  with  the  two 
legs  we  might  happen  to  see :  and  for  the  same  reason, 


306 


DIALOGUE  I. 


DIALOGUE   I. 


807 


viz.,  that  mat  apprehension  is  inadequate.     Why  should  it 
more  influence  our  thoughts  that  we  feel  a  world  that  is 
inert,  than  that  we  should  see  a  chair  with  only  two  legs  ? 
If  that  which  answers  to  our  impression  cannot  exist,  then 
our  impression  does  not  correspond  with  the  truth.    There 
is  no  maxim  more  thoroughly  familiar  in  practice,  or  incor- 
porated into  our  habitual  thoughts,  than  this.     Therefore 
I  say  that  we  can  now  perfectly  well  know  the  world  to  be 
spiritual,  and  deal  with  it  so  :  knowing  that  our  apprehen- 
sion of  it  is  defective  and  why  it  is  so.     That  is  only  to 
recognise  our  true  position,  not  to  alter  it.     Let  me  take 
another  instance  :  suppose  it  had  been  said,  in  reply  to  the 
assertion  of  the  earth's  motion,  that  while  we  are  as  we  are 
the  sun  must  be  revolving  to  m,  and  that  we  should  con- 
tinue to  think  and  act  as  if  it  were  truly  so  :  were  not  that 
ridiculous  in  theory,  absurd  and  hurtful  in  practice  ?    But 
not  more  than  that  we  should  regard  the  world  as  truly 
physical,  because  while  we  are  as  we  are  it  must  be  physical 
to  us.     I  say  that  we  may  know  that  it  is  not  truly  so,  and 
that  our  thoughts  and  practice  must  conform  to  our  true 
knowledge,  not  to  our  false  impression.     As  astronomers 
treat  the  earth  as  moving,  though  they  feel  it  steadfast,  so 
may  we  treat  the  world  as  spiritual  though  we  feel  it  inert. 
Is  not  thus  acting  according  to  truth,  and  not  to  appear- 
ance, always  what  is  meant  by  common  sense  ?     Is  it  not 
opposed  to  reason  to  say,  first,  these  things  are  but  phe- 
nomena, and  then  to  say,  treat  them  as  the  realities  ?    That 
which  is  but  a  phenomenon,  or  appearance  produced  by 
something  else,  I  will  treat  so  ;  I  will  treat  it  as  it  is.    But 
there  is  truth  in  your  remark  that  while  man  is  as  he  is  we 
must  feel  as  we  do,  and  have  the  experience  we  have  of  a 
physical,  material  life.     And  hereafter,  assuredly,  we  hope 
to  be  different.     But  let  us  not  mistake.     The  question  is, 
how  we  should  act  noic :  what  is  the  truth  of  this  present 


^ 


state  ?    The  answer  I  give  is  :  remember  man's  defect  of 
being,  which  alone  makes  us  feel  as  we  do,  making  phe- 
nomena realities  ;  and  treat  the  world  as  it  truly  is,  as 
spiritual  :  have  regard  in  all  things  to  man's  redemption. 
When  man  is  made  alive  then  phenomena  shall  be  no  more 
realities  to  him.    The  alteration  from  physical  to  spiritual 
must  be  by  a  change  in  man.     Our  being  in  this  physical 
state,  which  we  would  make  an  excuse  for  treating  things 
as  we  may  know  them  not  to  be,  is  the  result  only  of  his 
defect  of  being.     We  shall  be  different  when  that  ^is  done 
away.     Can  we  not  easily  understand  that  as,  by  defect  of 
knowledge,  man  has  opinions  not  corresponding  to  the 
truth  ;  so  by  defect  of  being  he  has  feelings  or  perceptions 
not  corresponding  to  the  truth  ?    For  example,  a  revolving 
sun  is  the  fact  to  his  thought  till  he  knows  more  ;  an  inert 
material  world  is  the  fact  to  his  experience  till  he  is  more. 
B.  This  is  the  very  point.    There  is  a  difference  between 
the  cases.     An  opinion  is  a  thing  which  we  can  alter ;  we 
understand  how  we  are  and  must  be  under  mistake  about 
things  ;  but  our  experience  and  feelings  we  cannot  change. 
The  material  world  is  real  to  us,  as  you  say  ;  then  should 
we  not  treat  it  as  being  real  to  us  ?     What  other  reality 
can  we  have  anything  to  do  with  ?    And  again  with  refer- 
ence to  your  illustration  of  the  chair  of  which  only  two 
legs  are  seen,  we  have  a  means  of  knowing  how  it  truly  is. 
We  can  see  all  four  legs  by  looking,  or  we  can  feel  them. 
There  is  not  a  parallel.     We  cannot  feel  the  world  not  to 
be  physical  as  we  can  see  a  chair  not  to  be  of  such  a  form 
as  it  presents  to  our  sight     We  always  feel  the  world 
inert. 

TV,  These  are  the  very  things  that  will  make  clear  my 
meaning,  and  show  you  that  we  are  not  really  opposed. 
All  that  I  seek  is  to  alter  an  opinio?}.  We  have  thought 
that  the  reason  we  perceive  and  feel  as  we  do  is  that  there 


308 


DIALOGUE  I. 


truly  exists  such  a  world  as  answers  to  our  feeling.     1  say 
let  us  think  that  the  truly  existing  world  is  more  than  it 
is  to  us  and  that  we  are  defective.     This  cannot  be  impos- 
sible.    I  seek  only  to  understand  our  experience,  not  to 
alter  it.    If  it  were  altered,  what  I  say  would  be  no  longer 
true.    The  whole  position  of  man's  want  of  life  is  founded 
on  the  fact  of  his  experience  being  of  a  physical,  material 
world :  in  a  word,  of  a  dead  world.    Suppose  the  sun  were 
not  any  more  perceived  as  moving,  would  not  the  proof  of 
the  earth's  motion  be  destroyed  ?    So  would  the  proof  of 
man's  deadness  be,  if  nature  were  not  felt  by  him  as  inert. 
You  say  that  we  have  means  of  correcting  our  impres- 
sions respecting  individual  things  but  not  respecting  nature 
as  a  whole  :  there  is  here  however  exactly  the  difference 
there  ought  to  be.     We  cannot  correct  our  impression  of 
the  world  as  inert,  by  means  of  our  senses :  it  is  inert  to  all 
our  senses  unitedly,  and  in  every  use  of  them  ;  but  we  can 
correct  it  by  means  of  our  thought.     We  have  an  intellec- 
tual as  well  as  a  bodily  perception.    The  laws  of  thought, 
equally  with  the  feelings  of  the  sense,  determine  our  opin- 
ions.   We  can  as  certainly  know  that  our  impression  of  the 
world  as  inert  differs  from  the  truth,  as  we  can  that  any 
other  impression  does  so.     We  must  use  the  appropriate 
means  :  due  consideration  and  a  riglit  use  of  reason.     We 
must  reflect  whether  it  is  possible  that  our  feeling  should 
not  be  defective ;  whether  that  which  is  but  a  phenomenon 
and  not  the  very  fact  that  exists  must  not  necessarily  be 
unacting  ;  whether  it  is  not  absurd  to  infer  that  therefore 
the  very  fact  must  be  unacting  also.     In  short,  we  must 
consider  whether  the  argument,  that  the  world  is  physical 
to  man  only  by  his  defect,  be  not  good  and  sound.     There 
is  no  other  way  in  which  the  question  ought  to  be  decided. 
Nor  is  the  question  in  itself  peculiar.    It  differs  from  other 
cases  of  the  use  of  reason  only  in  its  bearing  and  results, 


I 


i 


DIALOGUE  I. 


309 


I 


not  in  its  nature.    For  by  what  means  do  we  distinguish 
the  truth  from  our  impressions  in  cases  in  which  we  cannot 
apply  the  senses  :  in  astronomy  for  instance  ?    Only  by  such 
use  of  argument  and  reason.   But  this  is  not  the  end.  When 
you  say  that  we  cannot  fed  the  world  not  to  be  inert  as 
it  is  to  our  feeling,  I  join  issue  with  you  entirely.    I  afl&rm 
that  we  do  most  emphatically  feel  nature  not  to  be  that 
dead,  inert  mechanism  which  it  is  to  our  conceptions.    I 
appeal  to  all  the  history  of  human  thought,  to  literature, 
poetry,  science ;  all  are  leavened  with  no  intenser  feeling 
than  this  which  you  deny :  that  nature  is  more  "than  we 
feel  it  to  be.    I  would  appeal  to  science  above  all ;  for  all 
its  history  is  a  strife  between  these  two  feelings  :  that  na- 
ture is  living,  and  that  it  is  dead.    All  the  strangeness  and 
repulsiveness  with  which  it  affects  uninitiated  men,  all  the 
strife  which  it  undergoes  in  extending  its  domain,  the  ever- 
renewed  collision  between  it  and  the  devout  affections,  are 
due  to  this  two-foldness  of  our  feeling.     It  cannot  be  mere 
DEAD  necessity  that  constitutes  this  wondrous  life.     It  is 
no  matter  that  we  feel  it  so  ;  we  feel  as  much  that  it  is  not 
so.    Oh  happy  reconciliation  of  a  strife  too  long  and  weary ; 
peaceful  end  of  a  contentious  toil ;  bright  recompense  of 
zeal  undaunted  and  ungrudging  labor ;  that  the  deadness 
is  within,  the  life  without.    True  it  is,  we  feel  a  deadness 
and  we  feel  a  life.    What  shall  we  say  ?    How  shall  we 
apportion  them  ?   Is  the  deadness  man's,  man's  only  ?   May 
we,  dare  we,  think  so  ?    Is  this  the  consummation  of  the 
hope,  the  resolution  of  the  doubt,  the  interpretation  of  the 
mystery  ?    Man  wrestling  so  long  with  nature,  to  gain  this 
victory:  to  know  himself?     'Tis  rest  and  energy;  'tis 
humbleness,  and  exaltation;   'tis  content,  and   hope   un- 
bounded ;   'tis    self-renunciation,   and   high  resolve  ;   'tis 
penitence  and  joy.     Let  me  bow  my  head  in  shame,  it  is 
delight  to  be  abased  ;  let  me  lift  up  my  soul  in  joy,  I  will 


3J0 


DIALOGUE   I. 


DIALOGUE  I, 


311 


exult  in  God.  Thou  narrow  and  contracted  heart,  seeking 
thy  own  good,  laboring  fearful  and  in  doubt,  expand  thy- 
self, cast  ofif  thy  shackles,  melt  and  be  utterly  dissolved 
away.  This  is  death,  not  life.  Let  glad  laughter  take 
the  place  of  tears,  and  energy,  new  born  of  joy,  chase 
weariness  for  ever.  Oh  sacred  Life,  that  bearest  us  in  thv 
bosom,  swelling  around  our  empty  souls  that  shall  be  filled 
with  thee  ;  in  thee  we  do  rejoice.  Man's  life,  his  hope,  his 
destiny,  rise  so  much  higher  to  our  thought.  Because  our 
aspirations  were  not  large  enough,  because  we  were  too 
easily  content,  because  we  mistrusted  God  so  much  and 
hoped  so  little ;  therefore  the  world  has  been  so  dark.  Our 
LIFE  is  more  than  we  have  dared  to  think. 

B,  I  cannot  blame  your  enthusiam.  If  I  shared  your 
belief  I  should  also  share  your  joy.  But  the  question  now 
is,  not  what  is  beautiful,  but  what  is  true.  In  speaking  in 
this  way  about  life  and  death,  are  you  not  confounding 
words,  and  introducing  perplexity,  instead  of  giving  def- 
inite knowledge  ?  We  are  living  now,  and  we  die  when 
the  breath  leaves  the  body.  These  words  may  of  course 
be  applied,  figuratively,  to  other  conditions,  but  you  do 
not  seem  to  use  them  so.  It  is  difficult  to  make  the  thought 
follow  you. 

W.  When  was  a  new  conception,  however  true  or  sim- 
ple, first  introduced  without  such  difficulty?  How  long  it 
takes  a  person  to  whom  the  idea  is  strange,  to  understand 
that  at  the  antipodes  people  have  not  their  feet  uppermost. 
And  the  feeling  has  every  justification.  Nothing  can  be 
plainer  than  that  it  is  entirelv  a  new  use  of  words  to  sav 
that  they  are  not  head  downwards ;  in  no  possible  case 
can  the  evidence  of  sense  be  more  complete.  Yet  the 
whole  secret  lies  in  this :  that  up  and  down  are  relative 
terms.  So  are  life  and  death.  So  indeed  are  almost  all 
our  words.     It  introduces  no  perplexity  whatever  to  think 


'I 


of  this  physical  life  and  death  as  having  its  relative  place 
within  that  true  deadness  which  constitutes  man  physical. 
All  our  thoughts  in  so  far  as  they  are  disciplined,  or 
approach  towards  accuracy,  are  moulded  into  this  relative 
form.  Do  we  not  think  of  things  as  being  at  once  large 
and  small  in  different  relations,  or  as  relatively  true  yet 
absolutely  false  ?  May  not  a  thing  be  truly  moving,  yet 
relatively  at  rest,  so  that  we  consider  it  as  either,  accord- 
ing to  the  relations  in  respect  to  which  we  regard  it? 
Even  so  may  man  be  truly  dead,  yet  relatively  living,  and 
be  considered  as  either,  according  as  he  is  regarded  in 
relation  to  the  absolute,  or  to  tlie  phenomenal — to  the  true 
life  or  to  the  apparent.  I  deny  that  there  is  any  per- 
plexity here,  or  any  laxity  in  the  use  of  language.  I  use 
the  words  life  and  death  because  I  mean  the  things.  And 
for  justification  I  appeal  to  every  literature.  What  tongue 
is  there  in  which  a  life  and  death  of  man,  apart  from  bodily 
life  and  death,  is  not  recognised  ;  another  relation  of  man 
than  to  the  physical  ? 

R.  But  you  seem  to  invert  the  natural  order  of  ideas. 
We  have  been  accustomed  to  regard  the  life  wliich  we  are 
conscious  of  as  being  primary,  and  as  the  basis  of  all : — 
that  we  are  truly  living  as  men,  but,  according  to  the  state 
of  our  feelings  or  our  will,  we  have  or  have  not  a  life  to 
the  spiritual.  You  seem  to  imply  something  the  opposite 
to  this. 

W.  I  admit  that  I  seek  to  associate  a  new  thought  with 
the  words  life  and  death.  But  am  I  not  right  in  doing  so  ? 
Do  I  not  rather  restore,  than  invert,  the  truly  natural 
use.  Have  I  not  made  it  good  that  this  physical  life,  with 
consciousness  of  the  self  within  and  perception  of  external 
deadness,  is  not  the  true  life  of  man :  that  it  arises,  and 
must  arise,  from  want  of  life  in  him  ?  If  this  be  true,  then 
I  am  right  in  speaking  as  I  do  of  life  and  death.     If  it  be 


312 


DIALOGUE  I. 


not,  then  my  whole  thought  is  wrong,  and  my  use  of  these 
words  is  only  part  of  a  larger  error.  Words  must  follow 
thoughts,  although  they  may  also  lead  them. 

I  say  that  if  we  perceived  things  as  they  truly  are,  we 
should  consciously  perceive  that  man  is  wanting  in  life ; 
even  as,  if  we  were  removed  from  this  earth,  we  should 
perceive  that  man  is  moving.  And  that  we  may  now 
think  and  act  according  to  the  truth,  unembarrassed  by 
our  false  consciousness.  Our  consciousness  of  life,  when 
man  is  not  living,  need  no  more  perplex  us,  than  our  con- 
ciousness  of  rest  when  man  is  not  at  rest. 

M.  You  would  have  us  take  a  view  apart  from  our  own 
mode  of  feeling,  and  rise  above  that  which  is  perceived  by 
man  as  he  now  is,  to  that  which  would  be  perceived  by 
him  if  he  were  different.  And  you  appeal  to  astronomy  as 
proof  that  we  can  do  so.  We  do  so  by  recognising  some- 
thing in  our  own  condition  which  affects  the  way  in  which 
we  perceive. 

W.  Exactly.  All  our  perplexity  comes  from  making 
our  consciousness  the  measure  of  the  reality,  instead  of 
recognising  it  as  the  measure  only  of  the  phenomenon, 
from  which  the  reality  is  to  be  learnt  by  well-directed 
investigation.  Assuming  that  which  is  consciously  present 
to  our  perception  to  be  that  which  is,  we  can  comprehend 
nothing.  Intellectually  the  world  is  a  mystery  to  us; 
morally  a  fearful  problem.  Am  I  wrong  in  saying  that 
there  is  a  remedy  for  this  state  of  things  in  remembering 
that  man^s  deficiency  modifies  his  impressions  and  neces- 
sary convictions,  and  in  endeavoring  to  ascertain  in  what 
respects  the  very  fact  that  is  must  exceed  what  is  to  his 
consciousness  ?  That  is,  technically,  to  find  out  and  exclude 
the  negative  element  in  his  perception  by  taking  it  into 
himself.  If  we  will  do  that  the  clouds  roll  back,  the  mists 
clear  off,  the  darkness  turns  to  light.     Nothing  is  altered  : 


DIALOGUE  I. 


813 


but  we  understand.  Our  daily  work  remains  the  same  as 
before,  but  it  is  done  with  a  new  spirit.  We  direct  our 
aim  to  the  reality,  using  the  phenomena  with  reference  to 
that,  treating  them  not  falsely,  as  for  or  by  themselves, 
but  truly  as  they  are,  in  relation  to  a  different  fact  which 
alone  causes  them  to  be  perceived.  We  live  for  man's 
redemption.  We  see  that  the  raising  man  to  true  and 
worthy  life  is  the  secret  of  Imman  experience  ;  the  sacred 
mystery  of  nature. 

E,  Here  let  me  ask  you  another  question.  There  is  a 
want  of  colierence  in  your  language.  You  say,  first,  the 
cause  of  our  experience  is  our  presence  in  a  defective  state 
in  the  spiritual  world,  and  then  that  it  is  a  raising  man  to 
life.  Do  you  mean  to  say  that  these  are  the  same  ?  If  I 
granted  that  a  spiritual  object  (as  defined  by  you,  i.  e.  a 
not-inert  one)  is  the  cause  of  my  perception  of  an  inert 
object,  say  a  table,  e.  g.,  how  can  the  redemption  of  man  be 
also  that  cause  ?  When  I  ask  of  you  :  what  causes  me  to 
perceive  a  table?  I  might  receive  as  a  fair  answer,  'the 
action  on  you  of  an  object  different  from  a  table,  and 
especially  in  this,  that  it  is  not  inert  as  the  table  is  •/  but 
what  can  I  think  of  such  an  answer  as  this  :  *  Man's  being 
made  alive  causes  you  to  see  a  table  ;'  and  especially  what 
am  I  to  think  when  both  these  answers  are  given  at  once  ? 
To  me  they  seem,  to  say  the  least,  by  no  means  the  same. 

W.  I  owe  you  more  explanation  on  this  point,  but  I  think 
you  will  easily  see  that  the  inconsistency  is  only  apparent. 
Let  me  revert  to  the  ordinary  idea,  that  our  perception  is 
caused  by  the  operation  on  us  of  physical  things.  Now  I 
ask  the  same  question  :  What  causes  me  to  perceive  a 
table  ?  and  you  answer  me, '  the  action  on  you  of  the  table.' 
But  again  I  ask  you,  this  time  as  a  physiologist :  What 
causes  me  to  peiteive  a  table  ?  and  you  say,  '  a  certain 
condition  of  your  nervous  system,  some  molecular  opera- 
14 


814 


DIALOGUE    I. 


tion  in  your  nerves  and  brain/  Ought  I  to  charge  you 
with  inconsistency?  These  are  two  views  of  the  same 
thing.  My  two  positions,  that  the  cause  of  our  experience 
is  the  action  on  us  of  spiritual  existence,  and  that  it  is  the 
raising  man  to  a  truly  living  state,  are  two  views  of  tlic 
same  tiling  likewise. 

IL  But  you  do  not  make  clear  your  view  with  respect  to 
our  perception  of  physical  things. 

W,  My  expressions  may  have  seemed  obscure,  because 

they  were  meant  to  be  general.    I  do  not  give  any  opinion 

as  to  tlie  details  of  our  perception,  nor  do  I  attempt  to 

separate  perception  of  physical  things  from  the  total  of  our 

consciousness.    Of  that  consciousness  as  a  whole  I  say  that 

it  must  be  dup  to  the  action  on  us  of  an  existence  not  inert 

(or  physical),  and  that  our  having  conscious  perception  of 

inert  things  as  the  reality  demonstrates  a  defect  in  man. 

But  I  do  not  go  farther.    Possibly  we  may  hereafter  attain 

sufficient  knowledge  to  enable  us  to  understand  why  our 

perception  must  be  in  all  respects  such  as  it  is.     But  that 

is  a  question  which  must  be  solved  by  sedulous  examination 

and  study.     We  should  ill  have  profited  by  the  past  if, 

directly  a  new  problem  is  presented  to  us,  we  began  to' 

guess. 

i?.  I  understand  you  to  say  that  you  only  affirm,  in 
general,  that  the  Fact  which  truly  exists  is  spiritual,  and 
that  the  action  of  this  true  existence  upon  us  may  be  repie- 
sented  by  saying  that  it  is  the  making  man  alive.  Tliis  is 
man's  relation  to  the  spiritual :  but  you  do  not  attempt  to 
go 'any  further. 

TV.  Yes.  I  do  not  entertain  any  opinion  why  the  truly 
existing  (or  absolute)  should  cause  us  to  perceive  stars  and 
planets,  or  earth  and  water,  or  trees  and  animals.  I  think 
some  dim  intimations  of  why  it  should  be  so  may  be 
gathered,  some  guides  to  investigation  feel)ly  grasped,  but 


DIALOGUE  L 


315 


all  sucli  questions  clearly  must  remain.  They  do  not  press 
for  solution.  They  do  not  bear  upon  the  question  whether 
the  perceived  defect  is  in  man  or  apart  from  him. 

If  I  might  illustrate  my  meaning  again,  I  would  say  that 
the  proof  that  the  earth  revolves,  and  not  the  heavens,  is 
entirely  independent  of  any  question  about  the  nature  of 
the  starry  universe,  or  the  reasons  of  the  planetary  courses. 
These  were  problems  for  future  investigation,  and  even  yet 
they  are  but;  begun.  But  the  knowledge  of  the  earth's 
motion  was  the  indispensable  basis  for  the  commencement 
of  the  researches  which  promise  us,  in  these  respects,  so 
ample  a  reward.  So  I  conceive  that  the  recognition  of 
deadness  as  man's,  and  not  as  nature's,  is  a  basis  indispen- 
sable for  the  commencement  of  an  investigation  as  to  what 
nature  truly  is,  and  why  we  must  feel  it  as  we  do. 

R,  When  you  say  that  the  spiritual  world  is  the  Fact 
which  causes  me  to  perceive  a  physical  one,  I  must  neither 
suppose  you  to  mean  that  chairs  and  tables  are  spiritual, 
nor  that  there  are  spiritual  chairs  and  tables,  of  which 
these  are  the  images,  as  perhaps  some  Neo-Platonists 
meant ;  but  simply  that  my  perception  of  these  phenomena 
is  due  to  the  existence  and  action  of  Being  that  is  different 
from  them,  and  of  which  we  can  know  that  it  is  certainly 
spiritual— that  the  inertness  we  perceive  cannot  belong  to 
it,— but  respecting  which  you  do  not  pretend  to  say  why 
it  should  cause  us  to  perceive  as  we  do.  We  must,  in  a 
word,  leave  the  particular  relation  of  the  phenomenal  to 
the  absolute  to  be  investigated,  if  it  be  found  capable  of 
investigation. 

W.  Precisely  so :  the  effect  which  the  absolute  must 
produce  upon  our  consciousness  involves  the  three  ele- 
ments—first of  what  it  is,  second  what  ive  are,  third  the 
relation  between  us  and  it.  If  we  knew  more  of  ourselves 
and  our  relations  to  the  absolute  fact  of  nature,  the  effect 


316 


DIALOGUE   I. 


on  US,  of  which  we  are  conscious,  would  surely  enable  us 
to  know  something  respecting  it.    But  we  must  not  hasten. 
Nothing  is  truly  so  unreasonable  as  our  habit  of  inferring 
causes  directly  from  the  phenomena  we  perceive,  in  cases 
in  which  our  knowledge  is  not  complete.     I  was  struck 
with  a  trivial  illustration  of  this  a  short  time  ago,  wlien  a 
bright  circle  of  light  suddenly  darted  around  the  walls  of 
my  room.     The  children  were  delighted.     I  do  not  know 
what  they  thought  of  the  cause,  but  I  should  never  have 
imagined  it  myself,  without  a  good  deal  of  experience  of 
the  deceptiveness  of  sense  :  a  man  was  carrying  a  tin  can 
past  the  window  in  tlie  sun.     Now  it  is  easy  to  see  how 
this  cause  should  produce  such  an  impression  on  me  when 
I  understand  the  circumstances  :  the  sunshine,  the  reflection 
of  light,  and  so  on.     But  suppose  me  without  such  knowl- 
edge ;  how  then  should  I  possibly  have  inferred  a  tin  can 
from  what  I  saw  ?    I  cannot  even  now  detect  the  slightest 
resemblance  between  what  was  present  to  my  consciousness, 
and  that  which  caused  it  to  be  so.    I  could  not  help  think- 
ing what  an  infatuation  possesses  us,  when  we  fancy  we 
can  immediately  infer  from  our  impressions  of  nature,  from 
that  which  is  present  to  our  consciousness,  what  that  is 
which  causes  it  to  be  so.     I  wondered  that  I  ever  should 
have  inferred,  from  the  aggregate  of  my  impressions,  that 
the  cause  of  them  is  a  material  world  corresponding  thereto. 
I  am  by  far  too  ignorant.     This  only  I  venture  to  say : 
that  if  we  could  ascertain  all  the  circumstances,  we  should 
see  that  our  impressions  ought  to  be  such  as  they  are,  and 
should  be  able  to  trace  how  they  must  arise.     Even  as  I 
can,  in   scientific  fashion,  trace  my  impression  of  tliat 
meteoric  flash  to  tlie  sun  and  the  tin  can. 

But  I  bethink  me  of  another  use  of  my  illustration. 
Have  you  not  watched  cliildren,  sometimes,  trying  to  catch 
such  flashes  ?    Alas,  my  friend,  that  is  not  only  done  in 


DIALOGUE  I. 


317 


play  and  amid  merry  shouts  of  laughter.  My  ears  are 
filled  with  groans  and  blasphemy  instead,  and  faces  pale 
with  care,  and  scarred  with  passion,  rise  before  my  eyes. 
The  scene  is  changed ;  but  not  the  actors  nor  the  game. 
Game  do  I  call  it  ?  it  is  grown  to  deadly  earnest ;  a  mad 
battle  for  the  glancing  shadow.  Hope  and  despair ;  triumph 
and  rage ;  hatred  and  envy—  Let  the  scene  be  closed. 
These  are  our  Brothers  that  we  look  upon — ourselves. 
Will  no  voice  warn  us?  Sliall  we  never  l^now?  Never, 
like    grown    men,    turn    from    the    Appearance    to    the 

CAUSE  ? 

R.  I  understand  you  then  to  say,  that  the  Fact  which 
causes  all  these  things  to  be  present  to  our  consciousness 
(i.e.,  the  absolute)  is  spiritual.  That  in  relation  to  us  this 
spiritual  fact  is  the  making  Man  alive.  Consequently  that 
to  regard  things  as  they  truly  are,  and  to  act  according  to 
the  reality  and  not  to  the  mere  appearance,  we  must  in  all 
things  consider  and  have  respect  to  the  redemption  of  man. 
That  is  the  reason  which  necessitates,  and  is  the  only  true 
cause  of,  all  our  experience. 

And  you  say  that  our  natural,  and  as  it  were  intuitive, 
conviction  of  the  true  existence  of  these  inert  things  is  due 
to  our  natural  ignorance  :  being  just  such  a  conviction  as 
a  person  looking  through  a  stereoscope,  without  knowledge 
of  the  circumstances,  would  have  of  the  existence  of  a  solid 
body  such  as  he  has  consciousness  of.  And  as  to  act  aright, 
or  to  succeed  in  his  action,  in  reference  to  the  object  of 
his  vision,  the  gazer  through  a  stereoscope  must  act  not 
according  to  his  impressions,  but  according  to  a  knowledge 
founded  on  examination  and  reflection ;  must  act  with 
reference  to  something  difi'erent  from  tliat  which  *is  to 
him  ;'  even  so  must  we.  If  we  would  practically  succeed, 
we  must  treat  that  with  which  we  have  to  do  as  being  of 


318 


DIALOGUE   I. 


DIALOGUE  I. 


319 


a  different  kind  from  that  which  we  are  immediately  con- 
scious of.  We  must  guide  ourselves  by  a  knowledge  which 
subordinates  our  natural  impressions. 

IV.  Even  so.    If  we  separate  the  phenomena,  the  thin«rs 
that  are  present  to  our  consciousness,  from  their  connexion 
with  that  absolute  existence  (of  whatever  kind  it  be)  which 
IS  truly  acting  upon  us  to  make  us  perceive,  and  then  ask 
whether  those  phenomena  exist,  of  course  they  do  not     It 
IS  like  asking  whether  a  single  solid  thing  exists  in  a 
stereoscope,  ignoring  the  pictures  ;  they  both  do  exist  and 
do  not.     They  exist  as  phenomena,  as  that  which  we  are 
made  to  perceive  by  the  truly  existing  things,  but  can  only 
be  regarded  aright  when  viewed  in  that  dependence  upon 
and  relation  to,  something  else.   The  entire  difficulty  about 
the  material  world  arises  from  this  unnatural  disconnection 
of  the  phenomenal  from  the  absolute.   Let  them  be  rejoined 
and  nothing  can  be  simpler.     The  physical  world  exists  as 
a  thing  that  we  are  made  to  perceive  by  our  relation  to 
the  spiritual.     It  has  this  existence  and  no  other.     There 
would  never  have  been  any  need  to  discuss  the  existence 
of  the  phenomenal,  if  such  a  false,  isolated  existence,  apart 
from  that  which  is  not  phenomenal,  had  not  been  asserted 
for  it,  through  our  ignorance.     Any  person  may  see  the 
nature  of  the  case  directly,  who  will  suppose  Iiimself 
through  Ignorance,  convinced  of  the  physical  existence  of 
a  solid  body  in  a  stereoscope,  and  another  person  denying 
It,  and  trying  to  make  him  understand  that  there  are  two 
pictures  instead.    Let  him  conceive  that  the  denial  of  the 
solid  body  seems  to  him  like  a  denial  of  common  sense, 
like  affirniing  that  there  is  nothing  there  at  all,  but  that 
all  IS  an  illusion,  and  that  to  refer  his  impressions  to  two 
pictures  and  the  laws  of  his  own  vision  seems  to  him  ab- 
surd :  then  he  will  perfectly  realize  the  nature  of  the  diffi- 


culty which  is  felt  when  the  physical  world  is  denied  to 
exist,  and  our  consciousness  of  it  referred  to  a  spiritual 
existence  and  the  state  of  man^s  own  being. 

E.  It  is  only  through  ignorance  that  we  are  so  con- 
vinced of  tlie  existence  of  physical  things?  That  is  a  nat- 
ural impression  which  needs  to  be  corrected  by  learning 
the  true  circumstances  of  the  case  ? 

TV,  Yes.  It  is  not  they  that  exist,  but  something  more 
and  better  than  thev. 

R.  But  it  is  difficult  to  avoid  being  confused  by  these 
illustrations.  The  difference  is  so  great  between  one  ma- 
terial thing  making  us  seem  to  perceive  a  different  one, 
and  that  which  is  not  material  making  us  truly  perceive 
things  which  are  material. 

W.  Hold  fast  to  the  difference.  If  the  cases  were  the 
same,'  how  could  one  serve  to  illustrate  the  other  ?  The 
one  relates  to  merely  phenomenal  conditions,  and  to  the 
order  which  the  intellect  demands  in  its  ccnceptions,  the 
other  to  the  very  being  of  man.  The  one  relates  to  portions 
of  our  relative  experience,  the  other  to  man's  experience  as 
a  wliole.  Yet  these  instances  of  known  sensuous  deception 
are  true  to  the  point  in  hand.  They  help  us  to  understand 
wliat  the  nature  of  perception  is  ;  to  recognise  that  what 
is  consciously  present  to  our  perception  must  depend  on 
wliat  we  are,  and  how  we  are  circumstanced.  They  should 
at  least  suffice  to  break  through  the  only  real  obstacle  to 
an  understanding  that  the  world  is  not  physical,  viz.,  our 
firm  persuasion  that  what  we  set  down  as  our  consciousness 
cannot  land  us  in  a  false  conviction. 

It.  There  is  more  besides.  This  physical  world  is  so  very 
unlike  what  we  hold  the  spiritual  to  be.  Ask  yourself  like 
a  reasonable  man  :  How  can  our  being  in  a  spiritual  world 
make  us  live  upon  a  solid  earth,  build  material  houses,  eat 
material  food,  do  all  tlicsc  unquestionably  material  things? 


320 


DIALOGUE  I. 


Why  should  we  not  think  that  we  are  spirits  encased  in 
material  bodies,  as  we  have  always  believed  ?     It  makes 

everything  so  simple.     That  I 1  was  going  to  say— that 

I  understand. 

W,  It  is  well  you  stopped.    Do  not  you  see  tliat  this  is 
exactly  the  hypothesis,  or  supposition  according  to  the  ap- 
pearance, of  which  it  is  the  nature  to  seem  simple  at  first, 
and  be  found  mysterious  and  incomprehensible  at  last? 
That  is  to  the  intellect  the  broad  path  that  leads  where  it 
should  refrain  from  going.     We  must  be  content  to  enter 
tlie  strait  gate.    In  respect  to  knowledge,  as  to  life,  heaven 
is  inexorable  :  the  path  is  only  one.     We  must  submit  to 
use  reflection  and  thought,  to  be  guided  by  evidence,  to 
incur  trouble,  to  set  aside  convictions  however  cherislied, 
if  tliey  will  not  stand.     We  must  begin  so.     The  entrance 
is  hard  ;  not  the  end.     The  end  is  liberty,  and  light,  and 
gladness.    If  Icould  make  you  feel  what  it  is  to  know  that 
man  is  wanting  in  his  life  and  that  we  are  deceived,  you 
would  not  argue  with  me  any  more. 

H.  But  it  is  hard  to  conceive  that  these  solid  things  do 
not  exist.  We  take  them  as  the  type  of  existence  ratlier ; 
and  when  wo  say  of  any  other  things  that  they  exist,  we 
mean  tliat  they  are  as  real  as  these. 

W.  It  is  not  exactly  so.  Of  some  things  we  are  obliged 
to  say  that  they  are  more  real  than  these.  And  in  truth 
the  difficulty  is  not  so  great  as  it  appears.  It  is  the 
substantialness  of  the  world  that  makes  it  real  to  us  •  that 
we  work  and  walk  about  in  it.  In  fact,  it  is  its  existence 
m  space.  Did  it  ever  occur  to  you  to  ask  vourself  wliat 
space  is?  or  how  man  arrives  at  the  notion  of  it?  Reflect 
for  a  moment.  Is  not  space  exactly  negation— absence  of 
existence— pure  and  entire  *  not-being '  ?  We  cannot  think 
of  utter  absence  of  being  under  any  otlier  mode  than  tliat 
of  space  ;  we  cannot  exclude  space  from  our  thonjrht  of  ab- 


DIALOGUE  I. 


321 


sence  of  existence.  For  when  we  try  to  exclude  space 
from  our  conception,  we  have  to  think  of  befng  that  is  not 
in  space ;  as  spirit  is  held  to  be  by  some.  Is  it  not  a 
striking  thing,  that  we  have  obtained  from  our  experience 
of  the  physical  world  an  idea  which,  when  we  examine  it, 
we  find  to  be  that  merely  of  not-being  ;  that  this  not-being 
is  the  very  essential  condition  of  the  physical,  under  which 
only  it  can  exist?  Let  us  not  scruple  to  use  our  reason. 
Surely  the  feeling  and  conception  of  space  is  the  very  one 
which  we  ought  to  receive  in  feeling  tliat  to  exist  which 
does  not  exist.  Space,  or  not-being,  may  well  be  the  con- 
dition, or  mode  of  existence,  of  the  '  phenomenon.'  It  is 
like^the  inertia,  or  not-action,  which  we  also  associate  with 
it,  and  tells  truly  the  same  tale. 

R.  It  is  of  course  the  occupancy  of  space  that  makes 
things  solid,  makes  them  to  us  realities. 

W.  It  is  their  '  existence  in  not-being ! '  that  which  we 
feel  as  real  demands  '  not-being '  as  its  condition !  Do  we 
not  find  out  by  this  curious  linking  of  our  ideas,  that  we 
are  feeling  that  to  be  whicli  is  not  ?  Or  again  :  let  it  be 
supposed  that  man  feels  that  to  exist  which  does  not  truly 
exist  :  can  we  think  of  any  other  way  in  which  this  could 
be,  than  by  means  of  that  very  solidity  which  we  associate 
with  existence  in  space  ?  So  inert  things  are  our  realities. 
This  existence  is  not  truly  existence,  and  we  aptly  term  it 
existence  in  space :  it  is  the  reality  to  us  of  the  unreal. 
Man  feels  himself  in  space  by  his  defectiveness ;  by  his 
want  of  being,  *  not-being '  is  felt  around  him. 

B.  Let  us  leave  these  abstract  thoughts.  I  grant  that  I 
cannot  prove  the  existence  of  any  world  at  all  by  the  pres- 
ent metaphysics. 

W.  Analogies  help  us  more,  and  they  are  never  wanting 
to  anything  that  is  true,  for  nature  lends  all  her  treasures 
to  adorn  whatever  she  acknowledges.  What  we  feel  so 
14* 


822 


DIALOGUE  I. 


Strange  is  that  we  should  perceive  around  us  so  definite 
and  substantial  a  habitation  as  this  earth,  if  the  physical 
does  not  exist  absolutely,  but  is  merely  the  phenomenon 
to  us  of  some  other  existence.     But  look  at  the  sky  at 
night.     Consider  the  firmament.     Is  it  not  stretched  as  a 
canopy  folding  in  the  earth,  of  definite  circumference,  and 
solid  look  ?     Do  not  say  no  ;  for  liumanity  would  testify 
against  you.     History  proves  that  it  appears  so  to  man's 
natural  eye.     Is  there  any  such  canopy  around  the  earth  ? 
[s  there  anything  like  it  ?     Man  dwells,  to  his  conscious- 
ness, in  an  encircling  heaven  which  is  not.     A  liabitation, 
bright  with  gems  and  stretched  on  everlasting  pillars,  has 
been  prepared  for  him  ;— by  what  ?    By  his  presence  to 
infinity  bestrewn  witli  lavish  worlds.    And  why  ?    Because 
it  is  the  nature  of  liis  sight.     Why  should  not  man's  pres- 
ence to  the  spiritual  infinitude  of  being  place  him,  to  his 
consciousness,  in  a  home  like  earth,  amid  a  universe  of 
stars?    Do  we  ask  why  ?    Because  it  is  the  nature  of  his 
present  state  to  feel  as  dead  that  which  is  living  ;  because 
the  phenomenon  which  he  perceives  is  different  from  the 
truth  of  things,  and  by  his  defect  of  being  the  phenomenon 
is  his  reality. 


f 


DIALOGUE  IL 

R.  I  CLEARLY  see  your  meaning  :  one  thing  acts  upon  us, 
and  another  is  consciously  present  to  our  perception.  The 
former  you  call  the  Fact,  and  assert  that  it  is  spiritual  or 
active  ;  the  latter  is  the  phenomenon,  and  it  is  physical  or 
inert.  The  spiritual  truly  exists,  the  physical  exists  only 
as  an  appearance.  If  man  were  in  a  truly  living  state- 
not  defective  in  his  being — he  would  have  feelings  corres- 
pondent to  the  truth  ;  but  inasmucli  as  he  is  defective,  his 
feeling  is  wrong.  He  feels  that  which  is  only  phenomenal 
to  be,  if  not  the  sole,  at  least  a  true,  reality.  And  then, 
thinking  according  to  this  false  feeling,  he  finds  himself  in 
entire  perplexity,  and  unable  to  understand  the  rery  being 
of  anything.  You  would  say  that  he  needs  to  direct  his 
thoughts  according  to  a  different  plan. 

W.  If  we  directly  know  only  phenomena,  what  is  the 
practical  inference?  How  should  we  learn,  or  try  to 
learn,  the  Absolute  from  them  ? 

R,  Of  course  we  must  have  regard  to  the  state  of  man, 
and  consider  the  things  which  falsify  his  impressions.  I 
concede  all  you  say  on  that  general  question.  Nor  indeed 
is  it  new.  Only  in  the  application  of  tlie  principle  do  you 
differ  from  others.  For  the  common  idea  of  the  world,  as 
consisting  essentially  of  matter  and  force,  aI?o  involves  a 
consideration  of  man,  and  how  things  are  altered  to  his 
perception.     It  reduces,  for  example,  sound  and  light  to 

[323] 


i 


324 


DIALOGIE   II. 


mere  motions  of  i)nrticles,  and  supposes  in  man  sucji  a 
'nature'  as  causes  liim  to  perceive  this  bright  and  varie- 
gated and  musical  and  odorous  world,  through  the  action 
on  hira  of  something  wonderfully  different. 

W.  Quite  true.     I  only  wish  to  apply  an  established 
principle.    If  any  one  will  take  up  tiiis  question  simply  on 
Its  merits,  I  cannot  doubt  that  he  will  agree  with  me  in 
thinking  that  nature  must  be  les-s  to  us  than  it  truly  is  and 
not  more.    And  that  we  have  only  for  a  time  fallen  into 
the  other  way  of  thinking  of  it,  because  of  our  ignorance, 
burely  any  idea,  which   enables  us  to  escape  from  the 
necessity  of  supposing  that  matter  and  motion  mysteri- 
ously affect  us  with  such  perceptions  as  we  have,  ought  to 
be  welcomed  as  a  great  relief.     Wo  get  accustomed  to 
such  views,  and  so  lose  all  sense  of  their  amazing  difficulty 
and  quite  fail  to  remember  how  they  would  impress  us  iV 
we  now  heard  them  for  the  first  time. 

Thus  the  question  stands :  Nature  is  not  truly  and  in 
Itself  such  as  it  is  to  our  perception.     This  is  common 
ground  :  nature  is  altered  to  us  by  man's  being  such  as  ho 
IS.     W hat  then  is  that  in  man  wliich  alters  it?    Is  it  his 
known  defectiveness,  making  that  which  he   perceives 
defective ;  or  is  it  a  power  in  him  of  adding  innumerable 
qualities  ?    According  as  we  answer  this  question  will  be 
our  inference  from  our  perceptions.    If  it  be  the  latter, 
then  we  infer  an  inert  matter  and  endless  forces  different 
trom  what  we  are  conscious  of :  if  the  former,  then  we 
infer  an  acting,  spiritual  world  different  from  what  we  are 
conscious  of.     Is  not  the  relation  between  these  view,  evi- 
dent in  the  mere  statement?    Are  they  not,  respectivclv 
hypothesis  and  truth  ?    Is  not  the  former  the  first  natural 
construction  man  puts  upon  his  experience  in  his  ignorance 
before  he  has  learned  to  read  it  aright?    Does  he  not 
Cling  to  It  now,  as  he  has  clung  to  all  other  such  nat- 


DIALOGUE  II. 


825 


m 


ural  errors,  for  no  reason  but  that  he  is  accustomed 
to  it  ? 

It.  You  might  strengthen  your  argument  logically  by 
asking  also  whether  it  be,  on  any  ground,  admissible  to 
assume  many  positive  elements  in  man,  as  altering  nature 
to  him,  when  one  known  defect  will  serve  the  purpose. 
There  would  be  no  reasoning  at  all,  there  would  be  no 
more  any  science,  if  one  known  cause  could  not  demand  to 
be  received,  instead  of  several  merely  assumed  to  account 
for  the  phenomena. 

W.  You  are  right.  Man's  defectiveness  is  known.  That 
is  a  point  on  which  all  schools  of  thought  agree.  So  that 
my  position  is  this :  Nature  is  made  to  diflfer,  to  our  con- 
sciousness, from  that  which  it  truly  is  by  a  known  cause  ; 
namely,  by  man's  defectiveness.  That  defective  or  inert 
existence,  therefore,  which  we  conceive,  is  not  the  truth  of 
nature,  any  more  than  that  which  is  to  our  sense. 

B,  That  is,  indeed,  only  saying  that  science  deals  with 
phenomena  alone,, and  that  man's  thought  does  not  pene- 
trate to  the  Absolute. 

W.  But  observe  :  I  affirm  of  the  Absolute  not  onlv  that 
it  is  not  inert  or  material,  but  that  it  is  spiritual.  Here  I 
fall  back  upon  the  conscience  in  man.  I  say  :  If  we  admit 
that  the  true  reality  of  these  phenomenal  processes  is  not 
an  inert  necessity,  but  is  true  action,  then  we  must  admit 
it  to  be  right  action.  Science  proves  the  true  being  of 
nature  holy,  in  proving  the  phenomenon  of  it  iwert.  If 
there  were  not  necessity,  or  holiness,  in  the  Fact,  how 
should  there  be  necessity,  or  inertia,  in  the  appearance  ? 

Is  it  possible  for  one  who  admits  undeviating  Law  in 
the  phenomenon,  that  is,  who  admits  science  at  all,  to  deny 
Holiness  in  the  Absolute,  unless  he  either  affirm  that  Abso- 
lute to  be  enert,  or  else  refuse  to  let  his  words  express  the 
unavoidable  workings  of  his  consciousness  ?    Can  we  sepa- 


^26 


DIALOGUE   I. 


rate  moral  quality  from  action  truly  so  called  ?  Observe, 
I  am  not  asking  now  for  a  verdict  respecting  what  the 
Absolute  IS,  but  what  we  must  think  according  to  tlie  laws 
of  our  consciousness.  If  the  action  in  the  absolute  were 
not  always  one,  would  not  the  passive  change  in  the  plienom- 
enon  be  variable,  and  science  be  impossible?  'Inertia' 
is  but  the  phenomenal  reflex  of  holiness.  If  tlie  actin«" 
Absolute  in  nature  were  not  holy,  man  could  never  have 
constructed  a  science  of  the  unacting  phenomenon.  Is  not 
tliat  Holiness,  indeed,  tlie  true  ground  of  our  confidence  in 
the  universal  prevalence  of  Law  in  nature,  which  has  never 
yet  received  any  adequate  explanation  ? 

i?.  I  do  not  call  this  in  question  ;  granting  that  there  is 
a  spiritual  world  at  all,  of  which  we  will  speak  hereafter. 
If  you  can  prove  that  tlie  cause  of  our  consciousness  is  not 
a  passive,  but  an  active  existence,  few  will  refuse  to  follow 
your  inference,  that  the  invariableness  perceived  in  the 
}»henomenon  implies,  according  to  the  necessary  concep- 
tions of  mankind,  a  moral  necessity  in  the  action.  Prove 
the  sjurituality,  or  activeness,  and  the  holiness  will  not  be 
denied.  I  do  not,  myself,  know  of  any  class  of  men  who 
wish  to  ignore  moral  distinctions,  or  who  would  attach 
less  value  to  the  necessary  conclusions  of  the  moral,  than 
of  the  intellectual,  sense.  I  think  those  against  whom  this 
is  charged  are  for  the  most  part  misunderstood.  The 
question  rather  is:  Does  the  excluding  the  perceived 
inertness  from  the  Absolute  truly  involve  its  spirituality, 
in  the  sense  of  such  activeness  as  we  can  denote  holv  ? 

W.  I  should  be  most  happy  for  this  conclusion  to  be 
tested  in  every  way,  but  I  cannot  myself  think  at  all  in 
any  other.  I  cannot  even  conceive  any  alternative,  or 
possible  third  course.  By  saying  that  there  is  true  action, 
I  mean  holy  action,  and  cannot  suppose  myself  meanimr 
anytliing  else.     If  the  moral  element  be  rejected,  I  am 


DIALOGUE   IL 


327 


)iL 


h 


landed  in  inertness  again  at  once.  On  this  point,  there- 
fore, I  am  wholly  in  your  hands.  But  if  the  argument 
needed  reinforcing,  might  we  not  appeal  to  that  which 
nature  is,  to  the  wonderful  processes  and  results  of  the 
organic  and  inorganic  laws,  and  ask  :  If  there  be  not  pas- 
sive necessity  as  cause  of  this,  then  what  cause  ?  if  neither 
mechanical,  nor  spiritual,  necessity  is  here,  then  what  ne- 
cessity at  all  ?  how  can  these  things  be  ?  I  should  say  : 
Inert  necessity  appears  to  account  for  the  course  of  nature : 
Holiness  does  truly  account  for  it.  But  besides  these, 
what  account  can  possibly  be  conjectured?  Especially, 
what  account  which  does  not  reintroduce  the  banished 
inactivity  ?  If  it  be  replied  that  we  are  not  called  upon 
to  account  for  it  at  all,  I  should  make  answer  that  all  sys- 
tems do  give  account  of  it  in  some  mode  or  other,  and  that 
if  my  argument  be  allowed,  we  have  agreed  that  that 
which  exists  is  not  inert.  We  have  gone  so  far  as  to  ac- 
count for  the  course  of  nature  by  true  and  not  by  apparent, 
or  passive,  action. 

11.  I  should  not  dispute  this  point  if  I  were  satisfied  of 
the  rest.  But  I  remark  a  difficulty  you  labor  under  in 
respect  to  words.  You  do  not  mean  to  affirm  of  the  Abso- 
lute all  that  w^e  associate  with  the  word  '  moral.'  Not 
such  moral  action  as  ours  ;  such  holiness,  maintained 
against  temptation  and  in  spite  of  self;  but  a  holiness 
from  which  these  elements  of  strife  are  banished  ;  a  true, 
spontaneous,  necessary  holiness,  such  as  we  hope  for  in 
heaven,  such  as  we  adore  in  God.  You  are  obliged  to  use 
the  word  moral,  but  the  idea  it  conveys  needs  elevating. 

•  W.  The  word  spiritual  is  better.  That  seems  to  me  to 
express  the  true  conception.  I  might  define  it  as  that  to 
which  holiness  is  necessary.  Man's  toil  and  struggle  to 
be  holy  arise  from  want  of  the  spiritual  in  him  ;  they  arise 
from  self.     There  is  true  holiness  in  nature  because  self  is 


328 


DIALOGUE   II. 


not :  there  is  no  liking  evil,  whicli  alone  makes  *  virtue  ^ 
possible.  But  in  one  word,  Nature's  necessity  is  Love. 
Holiness  is  action  made  necessary  by  love. 

R.  But  if  the  inertness  we  perceive  be  not  truly  in 
nature,  if  that  particular  defectiveness  be  due  to  man's 
condition,  still  it  does  not  follow  that  there  is  not  some 
defect  in  nature.  We  do  not  thereby  assert  its  absolute 
perfectness.     I  presume  you  would  admit  this. 

W.  Certainly.  All  possible  questions  of  that  sort  re- 
main open.  I  affirm  only  that  the  phenomenon  alone  is 
inert  or  material :  the  true  existence  of  nature  acts,  or  is 
spiritual. 

R,  I  see  that  our  inference  of  a  material  world  rests 
upon  our  perception  of  inertness.  Matter  and  motion  are 
what  we  must  infer,  assuming  our  impression  of  nature  as 
inert  to  be  correct.  And  the  question  you  would  have  us 
ask  is  :  Wliy  are  our  impressions  such  as  they  are  ;  such 
that,  not  recognising  tlieni  to  be  influenced  by  man's  defect- 
iveness, we  have  necessarily  inferred  the  material  world, 
with  all  its  properties  and  forces  ? 

But  do  we  not  here  come  to  this  fact :  tliat  we  are  our- 
selves conscious  of  moving  ?  This  consciousness  of  motion 
is  the  chief  ground  of  belief  in  matter  and  motion  as  con- 
stituting the  world. 

W.  True.  That  which  we  feel  to  exist  is  in  space  ;  that 
which  .we  are  conscious  of  involves  motion.  I  do  not  deny 
the  materialness  of  the  phenomenon,  or  of  that  which  is  to 
our  consciousness.  Keep  your  eye  steadily  to  the  point. 
Nature  is  material  to  us  ;  we  consciously  move  in  it,  and 
must  do  so.  But  the  question  is  :  What  is  the  true  cause 
of  this  consciousness  ?     What  is  nature  apart  from  us  ? 

R.  You  mean  that  there  is  not  truly  motion,  although 
we  are  conscious  of  it :  that  which  truly  exists,  and  makes 
us  feel  motion,  is  different.     You  treat  motion  as  we  have 


DIALOGUE  IL 


329 


treated  luminousness,  and  say  that  we  are  made  to  be  con- 
scious in  that  way  by  something  that  does  not  resemble 
that  which  we  are  conscious  of. 

IV,  That  is  what  I  mean.     I  have,  at  least,  examples  to 
urge  in  support  of  it.     Motion  is  a  mode  in  which  we  feel 
something  that  is  not  itself  like  motion.     But  again  :  evi- 
dently  the  question  of  motion  and  that  of  sjyace  are  one. 
As  space  is  a  condition  of  all  phenomenal  existence,  so 
does  motion  seem  to  be  of  all  phenomenal  action.    It  is 
curious  that  we  cannot  think  of  any  natural  action,  except 
under  the  form  of  motion.     Some  men  argue,  absolutely, 
that  all  material  processes  can  be  nothing  else  than  forms 
of  motion,  and  for  my  own  part  I  profess  an  inability  to 
conceive  them  in  any  other  way  than  as  motions,  either  of 
larger  or  of  smaller  particles.     This  fact  is  full  of  instruc- 
tion.    Motion,  in  this  respect,  agrees  with  all  those  quali- 
ties which  are  introduced  into  our  perceptions  by  our  own 
condition  (all  subjective  qualities),  viz.,  in  being  universal. 
It  applies  to  all  our  perceptions :  as  any  condition  must 
which  belongs  to  ourselves.     I  would  suggest  that  it  is  a 
condition  of  our  own  that  necessitates  our  conceivini?  all 
perceived  actions  as  motion.     Motion  is  that  which  all  ac- 
tion becomes  to  our  conception.     All  the  action  of  nature 
of  whatever  kind,  is  motion  to  man's  thought.     Light,  or 
sound,  or  warmth,  everything  which  he  perceives,  refuses, 
when  he  endeavors  to  conceive  it,  to  be  anvthing  but  mo- 
tion to  him.    And  indeed,  if  we  consider,  it  is  evident  that 
the  mere  fact  of  man's  consciousness  of  space  necessitates 
tliis.     All  that  he  perceives  he  must  refer  in  thought  to 
action  in  space,  or  in  respect  to  space,  which  is  motion. 

R.  Perhaps  there  is  something  in  this.  I  do  not  expect 
you  to  be  able  to  give  an  explanation  of  all  things,  and 
the  question  of  motion  may  want  further  examination.  I 
see  that  it  is  only  part  of  the  general  question,  and  does 


I 


330 


DIALOGUE   II. 


DIALOGUE    XL 


331 


not  specially  affect  the  inquiry  whether  the  Absolute  be 
spiritual  or  not.  And  I  do  not  wish  to  be  one  of  those 
men,  of  whom  William  Harvey  says,  that  *  they  will  not  re- 
ceive a  new  system  unless  it  explains  everything/  It  is 
surprising  how  natural  it  is  to  adduce  any  unexplained  cir- 
cumstance as  an  argument  against  a  new  view,  witliout 
considering  whether  that  view  ought  to  explain  it,  or 
whctlier  it  is  better  explained  the  other  way.  All  of  us 
have  a  feeling,  as  if  an  opinion  we  liave  l)efore  entertained 
ought  to  be  held,  not  only  until  there  is  sufficient  evidence 
in  favor  of  another,  but  until  that  other  has  given  an  ex- 
planation of  every  question  we  can  ask.  I  have  learned 
to  be  on  my  guard  against  that  weakness. 

JV.  Harvey  could  not  explain  why  tlie  arteries  were 
found  empty  after  death.  At  least  he  could  only  suggest 
probable  reasons.  The  idea  that  they  contained  vital  spir- 
its accounted  perfectly  for  that  circumstance.  Yet  it  was 
proved  that  the  blood  circulates,  altliougli  the  reason  of 
the  emptiness  of  the  arteries  remained  to  be  investigated. 

B.  It  may  be  proved,  you  would  say,  that  the  Fact  of 
nature  is  spiritual,  although  many  things  cannot  be  ac- 
counted for. 

JV,  Observe  :  I  do  not  deny  that  *  we  move  ; '  but  I  in- 
quire wliat  is  the  true  meaning  of  that  statement.  There 
is  motion,  of  course,  in  the  same  sense  as  there  are  physi- 
cal things.  Motion  is  cither  truly  existing,  or  is  phenom- 
enal only,  according  as  that  which  exists  is  truly  physical, 
or  only  phenomenally  so.  The  question  is  whether  our 
consciousness  is  to  be  assumed  as  correct,  or  whether  it  is 
to  be  investigated  and  accounted  for.  And  I  would  suggest 
farther,  whether  the  right  question  for  us  to  ask  respecting 
all  our  experience  be  not  this  :  why  tve  are  so  impressed  ; 
why  we  have  been  obliged  to  make  such  suppositions  and 
entertain  such  convictions?    In  connexion  with  the  mate- 


rial world,  the  sole  fact  is  that  men  have  been,  and  we  are, 
necessarily  impressed  with  a  conviction  of  its  existence. 
But  why  should  it  be  called  a  '  melancholy '  fact  if  there  be 
not  such  a  world  ?  What  should  follow  but  that  there  is  a 
better  one  ?  Where  is  the  harm  if  we  are  naturally  under 
illusion  ?  When  once  we  know  ourselves  to  be  so  the  prac- 
tical evil  is  at  an  end.  Or  if  we  erect  our  impressions 
into  an  authority,  and  say, '  There  is  a  material  world,' 
what  are  we  advantaged  ?  We  have  gained  for  our  belief 
a  world  of  low  inferior  order,  one  that  even  we  cannot  but 
feel  to  have  some  evilness  and  degradation  in  it.  If  we 
will  admit  a  different  plan  of  thinking,  and  consider  man's 
known  defect,  then  we  may  believe  a  world  at  least  excel- 
ling that  in  value,  one  that  is  at  least  perfect  to  our 
thought.  It  is  every  way  a  gain.  Is  the  sun  less  bright, 
the  earth  less  solid,  food  less  satisfying,  are  smiles  less 
sweet,  or  words  less  full  of  meaning,  to  one  who  believes 
that  the  world  is  different  from  that  which  it  is  felt  by  him 
to  be,  than  to  another  ?  Is  his  confidence  less  in  the  sta- 
bility of  the  natural  laws,  because  he  refers  them  to  an  abso-. 
lute  holiness,  instead  of  to  mysterious  '  properties,'  of  which 
he  cannot  know  that  it  may  not  be  the  property  to  alter, 
or  at  least  to  produce  different  effects,  to-morrow  ?  It  can, 
at  least,  be  no  loss.  Our  sensations  are  not  altered  bv  the 
change  in  our  views,  as  all  agree  in  urging.  What  then  is 
the  difference  ?  the  difference  to  thought  and  belief,  in  res- 
pect to  which  alone  a  difference  exists  ?  Is  it  not  wholly 
an  advantage  ?  One  has  to  his  belief  a  low  dead  world, 
not  to  be  understood,  with  some  strange  badness  in  it :  the 
other  a  world  infinitely  glorious,  thrilling  his  soul  to  ec- 
stasy, and  a  conviction  of  dcadness  in  himself  that  rises 
into  aspiration  towards  a  worthier  life  for  all. 

For  is  it  not  evident  that  we  need  not  affirm  defect  with- 
out us,  if  we  will  admit  it  in  ourselves,  in  man  ?    Suppose 


332 


DIALOGUE  II. 


defect  within  :  will  it  not  be  perceived  without?  And  to 
perceive  defect  without,  what  could  that  be  but  to  be  in  a 
material  world,  or  something  essentially  the  same  ?  I  will 
not  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  a  Being  who,  by  defect  within, 
perceives  defect  without  must  feel  himself  surrounded  by, 
and  embodied  in,  matter  ;  but  I  can  think  of  no  other  way 
in  which  there  could  be  perception  of  defect  as  external. 
Must  not  such  a  being  feel  inertness  in  his  world,  and  be 
conscious  of  exertion,  and  of  force  ?  Would  he  not  neces- 
sarily infer  matter,  and  suppose  *  inertia,'  and  construct  a 
science  Of  passive  laws,  based  on  the  fact  that  the  action 
around  him  did  not  vary  ?  He  would  think  nature  dead, 
nor  ever  ask  himself  the  question  whether  it  could  be  truly 
so,  until  he  had  exhausted  all  contrivances  to  maintain  his 
natural  impression  as  the  truth. 

B.  As  to  our  being  conscious  of  moving,  it  occurs  to  me 
that  there  is  what  you  call  a  phenomenal  illustration,  which 
might  help  us  to  understand  it.  We  feel  ourselves  con- 
scious of  being  steadfast,  and  of  the  earth  being  at  rest,  yet 
we  have  good  reason  for  believing,  not  only  that  it  is  not 
so,  but  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  that  kind  of  rest  in 
the  universe,  and  that  all  the  stars  are  in  motion.  If  we  can 
be  conscious  of  steadfastness  while  there  is  truly  no  such 
thing,  why  may  we  not  be  conscious  of  moving  though 
there  is  truly  no  such  thing  as  motion  ?  What  we  are  con- 
scious of  and  what  truly  exists  are  different  questions. 

W.  I  thank  you  for  your  suggestion.  Parallels  of  this 
kind  are  at  least  of  avail  to  meet  objections  that  are  ap- 
parent only  ;  and  help  to  clear  the  course  of  an  argument 
from  considerations  which  do  not  truly  affect  the  conclu- 
sion. And  let  me  point  out  to  you  how  your  remark  also 
bears  upon  what  you  just  now  observed,  that  nature  may 
not  be  wholly  free  from  defect,  although  not  having  in  it 
the  defect  which  we  perceive  as  inertness-althouo-h  that 


I 


DIALOGUE  II. 


333 


M 


may  be  from  man.  The  sun  and  stars  are  moving,  although 
the  obvious  motion  which  man  at  first  attributes  to  them  is 
due  to  his  own.  We  need  first  to  understand  their  relative 
steadfastness,  and  our  own  motion,  before  we  can  begin  to 
examine  whether  they  truly  move.  So,  perhaps,  we  may 
inquire  respecting  defect  in  nature,  when  we  have  first  re- 
cognised its  relative  perfectness,  and  man's  defect. 

And  while  this  idea  is  before  us,  let  me  remark  an  appli- 
cation of  it  to  the  question  of  freewill.  We  feel  conscious 
of  an  arbitrary  freedom.  Yet  perhaps  it  may  be,  not 
only  that  man's  arbitrariness  is  not  freedom,  but  that  there 
is  and  can  be  no  such  freedom  ;  that  man  feels  himself  con- 
scious of  a  thing  that  cannot  be,  and  that  in  fact  freedom 
excludes  arbitrariness. 

B,  That  may  be  true  :  at  least  it  is  beautiful  to  think. 
Then  God,  as  of  all  Beings  the  most  free,  is  also  the  most 
free  from  arbitrariness.  With  Him  wrong  is  impossible. 
His  sovereignty  is  His  absolute  rectitude.  His  will  nothing 
can  constrain  or  draw  aside. 

But  let  me  put  an  illustration  of  yours  in  my  own  way. 
The  sun  is  revolving  to  us,  but  we  think  of  it  as  at  rest, 
and  of  man  as  revolving :  Nature  is  inert,  or  dead,  to  us, 
why  should  we  not  think  of  it  as  active  or  living  (spiritual), 
and  of  man  as  wanting  life  ?  We  are  not  conscious  of 
man's  motion,  we  infer  it  from  his  perception  :  so  we  are 
not  conscious  of  man's  deadness,  we  infer  it  from  his  per- 
ception. And  in  each  case  we  find  a  practical  benefit  in 
our  better  knowledge. 

W.  Thank  you. 

B,  Let  me  try  again.  As,  in  respect  to  any  solid  body, 
that  wliich  we  can  perceive  by  sight  (or  see)  must  differ 
from  the  truth  of  that  object  by  defect ;  that  is,  the  object 
must  be  more  than  can  be  perceived  by  sight — as  that 
which  can  be  '  seen'  is  only  surface  or  appearance,  and  to 


S34 


DIALOGUE  II. 


DIALOGUE  II. 


say  of  that  '  it  is/  would  be  to  affirm  the  existence  of  an 
appearance :— so,  in  respect  to  true  existence,  that  which 
we  can  perceive  by  the  intellect  (or  think)  must  differ  by 
defect  from  that  which  is.  That  which  can  be  thought  is 
only  a  phenomenon  :  and  to  say  of  that  *  it  is,'  is  to  affirm 
the  existence  of  a  phenomenon. 

Thus,  for  example,  we  must  think  of  the  world  as  mate- 
rial, must  conceive  matter  and  force ;  but  we  should  never 
think  of  saying  it  is  so.  Matter  and  force  differ  from  the 
true  BEING  of  nature  by  defect. 

W,  You  understand  that  these  are  used  as  illustrations 
of  a  proposition  independently  proved,  and  not  as  them- 
selves proofs. 

B.  I  understand.    That  which  is  not  the  absolute  exist- 
ence of  nature   must  differ  from   that  Absolute  in  not 
acting.    Therefore,  if  we  do  not  know  the  Absolute,  the 
phenomena,  which  we  do  know,  must  be  inert.     Let  me 
ask  you  a  question  here.    The  phenomenon  may  be  defined 
as  that  which  is  present  to  consciousness.    Now  when  that 
which  is  present  to  consciousness  differs  from  that  which 
truly  exists,  of  course  it  will  be  inert ;  it  will  be  a  phenom- 
enon only,  and  cannot  act.     But  might  there    not  be  a 
case  in  which  the  phenomenon  and  the  true  existence 
should  be  the  same?    Might  not  that  which  is  present  to 
consciousness  correspond  truly  to  the  Absolute?     And 
then  would  not  the  phenomena  also  be  not-inert,  also  be 
active  or  spiritual  ? 

W,  I  think  with  you ;  in  such  a  case,  in  which  the  phe- 
nomenal  and  the  absolute  should  be  one,  or  perception 
agree  with  the  truth  of  things,  the  Being  would  surely  be 
cmscionsly  in  a  spiritual  world. 

R,  Now  I  see  that  I  have  been  defining  the  very  thiuir 
that  you  call  the  true  life  of  Man.  If  Man's  defect  or 
deadness  were  removed,  then  that  which  he  is  conscious  of 


335 


h 


would  not  any  more  be  defective  or  inert.  The  true  exist- 
ence of  nature  would  be  to  him  as  it  is  ;  he  would  per- 
ceive  things  as  they  are,  and  the  distinction  between  phe- 
nomenal and  absolute  would  be  done  away. 

W,  It  might  be  so.     This  would  surely  answer  well  to 
the  idea  of  being  in  a  spiritual  world,  that  the  world 
should  be  to  us,  as  it  is  in  truth,  spiritual ;  and  this  could 
only  be  by  the  taking  away  from  us  of  the  defectiveness 
which  modifies  our  feeling.    That  would  be  to  escape  from 
the  physical.     The  thought  seems  consistent  and  simple 
enough  ;  yet  I  would  not  affirm  it.     These  simple  and  nat- 
ural thoughts  are  apt  to  deceive.     They  must  be  false 
when  our  knowledge  is  imperfect,  and  I  do  not  think  we 
yet  know  all  that  must  determine  the  answer  to  your 
question.     Perhaps  on  the  other  hand,  the  phenomenon 
may  always,  and  necessarily,  differ  from  the  Absolute,  but 
wlien  man's  defect  of  being  is  removed,  they  may  be  con- 
sciously associated  in  his  feeling ;  and  the  physical  may 
present  itself  to  us  aright,  not  as  that  which  is,  but  as  the 
mode  under  which  that  whicli  is  appears  to  us.     This 
latter  thought  more  commends  itself  to  the  affections.    Do 
you   see  that  so  this  beautiful  phenomenal   universe  (it 
may  be  under   ever  changing  forms)  might  always  re- 
main to  us,  but  not  as  the  reality ;  being  known  and  felt 
as  It  IS,  in  Its  true  dependence  on  spiritual  being,  and  as 
perceived  by  us  only  by  our  relation  to  that  beino-?     Do 
not  you  see  how  in  that  way  we  might  retain  our  hold 
on  all  that  we  have  loved  and  lived  for,  not  losing  it  in 
passing  to  a  different  state,  but  having  it  glorified  and 
gladdened,  and  enriched  with  unspeakable  meaning?  and 
not  only  so,  but  we  may  conceive  of  unnumbered  univer<^es 
equal  to,  or  surpassing  this  in  glory,  though  this  surpasses 
infinitely  all  our  thought.     Unnumbered  universes    per- 
ceived, enjoyed,  and  known  as  the  phenomena  of  the  one 


336 


DIALOGUE   II. 


true,  absolute  Universe  that  is.  Thus  we  multiply  creation 
infinitely,  to  our  thought.  Nor  let  it  be  said  :  that  were 
to  make  a  mere  illusion  of  all.  How  should  it  be  so  ? 
What  value  is  there  in  matter?  Will  anyone  pretend 
that  the  dead  substratum  has  any  worth,  of  any  sort,  real 
or  imaginary,  and  that  the  Universe  we  know  would  not  be 
more  rather  than  less,  if  the  inference  of  matter  were 
proved  a  mistake  ? 

i?.  We  have  an  idea  that  God's  power  is  displayed,  or 
proved,  by  the  creation  of  matter  :  bringing  into  existence 
that  which  did  not  exist.  So  we  have  a  certain  momentary 
reluctance  to  part  with  it,  until  we  reflect  that  we  give  it 
up  only  for  a  Universe  more  noble,  and  in  which  God's 
creative  glory  is  therefore  more  displayed.  We  must  be 
rather  glad  than  sorry,  to  understand  that  this  low,  evil 
thing  is  not  that  which  God  has  created,  but  that  whicli 
man  has  invented  ;  that  it  measures  man's  power  of  appre- 
hending, not  God's  power  of  making.  But  I  do  not  know 
that  I  wholly  see  your  meaning  about  unnumbered  uni- 
verses, perceived  by  different  classes  of  Beings,  as  phe- 
nomena of  one  and  the  same  true  Universe. 

W.  Will  you  allow  me  another  illustration  ? 

R.  You  seem  never  at  a  loss  for  those. 

W.  They  crowd  upon  me.  The  relation  between  the 
phenomenal  and  the  absolute  seems  to  me  exactly  to  resem- 
ble that  between  false  appearances  and  the  truth  of  things. 
I  should  say  :  as  the  appearance  is  to  the  phenomenon,  so 
is  the  phenomenon  to  the  Absolute.  From  an  appearance, 
by  considering  our  phenomenal  relations,  we  learn  the 
phenomenon,  or  that  which  is  true  to  thouglit :  from  t!ic 
phenomenon,  by  considering  man's  absolute  relations,  we 
learn  the  Absolute,  or  that  which  is  the  verv  truth  of  beino*. 
The  one  process  is  ever  available  to  illustrate  the  other. 

Thus,  for  the  point  in  question.    Should  we  not  be  sorry 


i, 
I 


DIALOGUE  II. 


337 


if,  in  learning  that  the  stars  constitute  a  boundless  universe 
instead  of  a  limited  sphere  as  they  are  to  us,  we  lost  our 
old  familiar  heavens,  and  no  more  saw  the  accustomed 
constellations  ?  that  is,  if  the  appearance  were  altered  by 
our  true  apprehension  of  the  phenomenon.  And  why,  in 
gaining  a  true  apprehension  of  the  absolute,  should  the 
familiar  phenomenon  be  taken  from  us  ?  Is  it  not  enough 
for  us  to  corweive  the  stars  aright  ?  Do  we  wish  them  to 
look  different  ?  So,  would  it  not  be  enough  for  us  to  feel 
and  know  the  universe  as  it  is  ;  why  should  the  phenom- 
enon be  altered  ?  Only  let  it  be  hut  phenomenon  to  our 
experience.  Let  our  Life  be  in  the  Absolute,  even  as  our 
thought  is  of  the  genuine  stars,  and  not  of  globelets  rolling 
round  on  wheels. 

As  for  the  different  phenomenal  universes  percived  by 
Beings,  this  will  illustrate  what  I  mean.  Is  there  not  a 
different  apparent  universe  to  the  dwellers  on  every  sep- 
arate star  or  planet,  if  there  be  any  such  ?  Is  there  not  a 
diff'erent  appearance  of  the  heavens  to  every  differently 
organized  eye  ?  And  yet  but  one  phenomenon : — the  stars 
that  we  conceive. 

E,  I  must  ask  you  one  thing  more  on  this  subject :  what 
happens  at  the  death  of  the  body  ? 

W.  I  decline  the  question.  I  avoid  expressing  any 
opinion  on  that  subject  intentionally,  in  order  that  my 
argument  may  not  be  embarrassed  by  any  mistake  I  might 
fall  into. 

R,  But  you  must  have  some  opinion. 

W.  Certain  things  I  think  :  for  instance,  that  men  do 
not  pass  into  the  spiritual  world  thereby,  because  they  are 
in  it  now  :  that  they  do  not  come  to  the  end  of  a  proba- 
tion for  eternity,  because  I  find  that  idea  to  be  a  human 
doctrine,  and  as  it  seems  to  me  a  mistaken  one  :  that  there 
is  nothing  in  that  change  to  remove  the  defect  under  which 
15 


338 


DIALOGUE   II. 


men  are,  and  which  causes  them  to  feel  inertness  without 
them.  1  see  in  it  nothing  to  make  men  good,  nothing  to 
make  them  worse.  In  fine,  I  am  perfectly  content  to  wait 
for  better  ground  of  judging,  which  I  believe  will  hereafter 
be  found.  Why  should  I  be  in  haste?  Do  not  I  know 
that  man  is  redeemed,  that  all  men  shall  be  brought  to 
Christ  ?  I  have,  however,  certain  individual  impressions, 
which  are  of  purely  private  interest,  and  I  gather  also, 
from  the  New  Testament,  intimations  of  an  anticipation 
on  the  part  of  Christian  men  of  being  present  with  the 
Lord  on  the  occurrence  of  that  event. 

R.  I  am  prepared  now  to  enter  into  your  meaning.  Of 
course,  regarding  this  physical  condition  as  you  do,  the 
dying  of  the  body  is  a  different  thing  from  that  which  it  is 
on  an  opposite  conception.  On  your  view  there  is  no 
reason  for  entertaining  a  positive  opinion  on  that  subject. 
The  change  is  a  phenomenal  one.  On  the  view  that  man 
is  a  spirit  in  a  body,  instead  of  only  seeming  to  be  so,  and 
that  the  spirit  is  set  free  at  death  and  enters  into  the 
spiritual  world,  of  course  men  are  bound  to  give  an  ac- 
count of  what  becomes  of  it. 

W,  I  cannot  cease  to  be  astonished,  when  I  think  that 
the  entire  religious  opinions  of  so  many  men  are  based 
upon  their  supposition  of  what  happens  at  the  deatli  of  the 
body.  I  know  how  natural  that  feeling  is,  but  if  we  ask 
ourselves  whether  we  really  do  know,  surely  we  must 
admit  that  we  do  not.  We  have  in  fact  adopted  ancient 
heathen  speculations,  and  grafted  them  upon  the  Bible. 

R.  Do  you  think  then  that  the  Bible  is  silent  on  the 
subject  ? 

W,  I  do  not.  I  think  much  may  be  gathered  from  its 
words,  and  if  there  were  any  practical  necessity  for  de- 
ciding, we  might  enter  into  the  discussion.  But  I  do  not 
feel  it  an  urgent  question.    For  all  practical  ends  1  know 


DIALOGUE  IT 


339 


enough  :  I  know  the  redemption.  That  I  believe,  not  be- 
cause I  understand  how  it  is  take  place,  but  because  it  is 
expressly  revealed ;  and  because,  reading  nature  by  the 
light  of  the  Gospel,  I  see  it  there  also. 

R.  Then  in  order  to  believe  that  man  is  to  be  saved,  we 
need  not  know  what  happens  at  death  ? 

W.  Clearly  not.  And  further,  I  believe  that  we  cannot 
rightly,  or  wisely,  attempt  to  unravel  that  interesting 
problem,  until  we  can  feel  thus  calmly  respecting  it.  The 
first  condition  for  any  true  knowledge  on  that  question 
seems  to  me  that  we  should  be  content  to  wait  for  it,  and 
be  patient. 

R,  It  is  a  new  idea  ;  yet  when  we  reflect,  what  is  there 
in  bodily  dying  which  should  have  made  us  think  it  so 
great  and  decisive  a  change  ?  Surely  we  have  been  carried 
away  by  the  undue  influence  of  the  senses,  in  thinking  of 
it  as  we  have  done. 

W,  I  believe  that  is  the  secret  of  it.  To  sense,  bodily 
death  seems  a  consummation,  an  ending,  a  great  and  ter- 
rible catastrophe.  It  is  no  wonder  that  men  should  have 
associated  religious  ideas  with  it,  as  they  have  done. 

R,  We  have  distinguished  dying  from  the  rest  of  our 
experience,  as  if  it  had  some  special  connexion  with,  and 
determination  of,  our  spiritual  destiny.  Can  that  be  a 
mistake  ? 

W.  Think  of  the  New  Testament.  Are  there,  in  any 
part  of  it,  any  such  exhortations  to  secure  salvation  while 
life  lasts,  as  are  so  abundant  in  our  discourses  and  books 
of  religion  ?  Is  there  not  an  utter  dissimilarity  of  tone 
between  the  scriptural  writers  and  those  who,  in  these 
days,  urge  men  to  repent  on  the  score  of  the  nearness  of 
death  ?    I  know  no  greater  contrast  anywhere. 

R.  We  need  not  pursue  this  subject.  I  perceive  that 
this  is  but  part  of  the  general  idea.    If  we  have  been  mis- 


340 


DIALOGUE  II. 


taken,  as  you  affirm,  respecting  man's  present  deadness, 
it  is  easy  to  understand  that  we  have  been  mistaken  re- 
specting the  spiritual  bearing  of  bodily  death.  Whether 
there  be  any  passages  of  Scripture  which  imply  the  ordinary 
conception  of  the  results  of  dying,  I  will  reserve  for 
thought. 

TT.  There  is  one  that  will  readily  occur  to  you :  the 
parable  of  Dives  and  Lazarus. 

R.  How  do  you  understand  that  ? 

W.  It  is  a  passage  I  do  not  profess  perfectly  to  under- 
stand. But  I  think  you  will  see  that  it  does  not  decide  any- 
thing in  the  present  question.  The  expressions  which  dwell 
in  our  minds  do  not  contain  the  ideas  we  associate  with  them. 

R,  The  rich  man  is  tormented  after  death. 

W,  I  do  not  deny  that  evil-doers  have  this  destiny. 

R.  But  between  him  and  Lazarus  there  is  a  great  gulf 
fixed,  which  neither  can  pass. 

W,  There  is.  Is  not  this  the  doctrine  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament throughout,  and  of  the  Old  also  ?  '  Can  the  Ethi- 
opian change  his  skin,  or  the  leopard  his  spots  ? '  Does  the 
bad  man  ever  become  good  by  his  own  self  act,  is  he  not 
always  renewed  by  God  ?  And  do  not  we  ourselves  speak 
in  the  same  way  ?  Is  there  not  an  impassable  gulf  fixed 
by  God  between  the  good  and  the  evil  ?  In  short,  I  think 
the  ideas  we  connect  with  this  passage  are  not  in  the  words 
themselves,  but  are  attached  to  them  by  us  because  they 
are  previously  in  our  minds.  The  words  agree  perfectly 
with  the  repeated  and  direct  affirmations  of  the  absolute 
redemption.  What  can  have  made  us  subordinate  the 
explicit  statements  which  assert  the  redemption  of  all  to 
phrases  which  form  part  of  the  machinery  of  a  parable  ? 
Is  this  in  conformity  with  our  own  established  principles  ? 
Is  there  not  proof  here  that  we  have  brought  ideas  of  our 
own  to  the  New  Testament  ? 


DIALOGUE  IIL 


R.  Let  us  pass  to  another  subject.  In  respect  to  Matter, 
you  set  aside  any  authority  of  our  supposed  intuitions  and 
ask  :  What  has  made  it  necessary  for  men  to  infer  it  ? 
And  you  answer,  that  it  is  a  defectiveness  of  their  own 
being  which  has  made  them  feel  as  reality  that  which  is  but 
phenomenal.  Hence,  inasmuch  as  a  phenomenon  of  course 
cannot  act,  they  have  been  compelled  to  infer  an  unacting 
substratum.  It  is  a  false  inference  necessitated  by  man's 
own  condition,  and  only  to  be  escaped  from  through  better 
knowledge  :  in  this  respect  being  like  all  the  other  false 
inferences  men  have  been  compelled  to  make.  And  this  is 
why  the  question  of  matter  has  been  so  contended.  It  has 
been  an  inference  at  once  necessary  and  false.  However 
easy  to  disprove,  still  while  the  necessity  of  inferring  it  re- 
mains, through  overlooking  man's  defect,  it  holds  its 
ground.  Thus  comes  the  state  of  things  which  has  been 
so  often  noticed,  that  men  continue  to  believe  in  matter 
though  they  admit  the  arguments  against  it.  That  result 
is  involved  in  the  nature  of  the  case.  And  the  supposition 
of  an  authority  in  our  perceptions,  to  vouch  without  in- 
vestigation for  the  true  nature  of  that  which  causes  them, 
follows  as  a  natural  attempt  to  bridge  over  this  difficulty, 
until  the  solution  of  it  be  found  in  man's  defective  appre- 
hension. But  this  supposition  is  opposed  to  experience, 
which  shows  that  our  direct  perceptions  are  not  author- 
itative as  to  the  nature  of  that  which  causes  them  in  the 

[^41] 


342 


DIALOGUE  III. 


case  of  individual  phenomena  : — opposed  to  reason,  which 
shows  that  what  we  are  immediately  conscious  of  must 
depend  in  part  on  what  we  are,  and  how  we  are  related  to 
the  object  which  acts  on  us :— opposed  to  the  emotions, 
which  reject  with  indignant  scorn  the  idea  that  Nature 
can  truly  be  what  the  matter  and  motion  hypothesis  re- 
presents it :— opposed,  in  fine,  to  every  sound  metliod  of 
judging  of  the  relation  of  causes  and  effects ;  for  if  we 
grant  nature  to  be  matter  and  force,  how  can  it  possibly 
make  us  perceive  what  we  do,  or  indeed  perceive  anything 
at  all  ?  That  beautiful  problem,  of  the  relation  between 
the  percipient  consciousness  and  the  world,  has  changed 
itself,  under  this  method  of  taking  our  impressions  for 
granted,  into  the  blackest,  dreariest,  most  impassable  of 
gulfs.  We  come  to  a  sudden  halt.  Between  matter  out 
there,  and  my  sight  of  a  flower,  let  no  rash  mortal  presume 
to  indicate  the  least  dream  of  a  rational  connexion. 

W.  Yet  I  thought  matter  had  been  inferred  in  order  to 
account  for  our  perceptions.  Why  then  does  it  fail  exactly 
when  we  come  to  the  whole  final  cause  of  its  supposition  ? 
Why  not,  in  any  other  case,  argue  in  the  same  way,  and  in 
respect  to  anything  which  we  naturally  suppose,  but  the 
existence  of  which  could  not  account  for  our  impressions, 
maintain  their  truth  and  say  :  it  is  a  mystery.  For  example, 
why  not  so  meet  the  argument  that  the  stars  cannot  be 
little  white  flames  ?  Why  not  say :  they  are  so,  but  we 
must  not  ask  how  we  can  perceive  them  so  far  off?  Were 
not  that  as  reasonable  as  to  say,  that  Nature  is  an  inert 
existence,  as  it  is  to  our  impression  ;  and  when  it  is  argued 
that  an  inert  existence  could  not  cause  us  to  perceive, 
reply:  that  we  must  not  ask  such  questions;  that  is 
sacred  ?  Plainly  we  are  on  the  wrong  path  here.  Whatever 
may  be  the  truth,  this  idea  of  a  matter-substratum  has  had 
its  day.    No-theory  of  the  world,  a  candid  confession  that 


DIALOGUE  IIL 


343 


we  cannot  account  for  our  experience  at  all,  would  at  least 
be  better  than  that.  Better  positively  :  it  would  be  truth- 
ful, genuine,  manful ;  the  attitude  which  a  genuine  man 
naturally  takes  towards  that  which  he  does  not  under- 
stand :— infinitely  better  negatively,  for  it  would  leave  the 
path  open  for  a  more  hopeful  and  more  humble  way  of 
attempting  the  solution.  I  see  no  one  purpose  that  the 
matter-hypothesis  answers,  but  that  of  puffing  us  up  with  a 
vain  conceit  of  knowing  all  about  the  world,  and  prevent- 
ing us  from  investigating.  That  matter-world  has  just 
solidity  enough  to  block  up  our  way,  and  no  more.  Sup- 
pose we  had  to  eat  *  matter'  instead  of  meat,  or  sit  on 

*  matter'  instead  of  chairs,  we  should  find  it  unsolid  enough 
then  I  fear. 

R.  That  were  Berkeley's  theory  realized  :— men  living 
in  a  world  that  is  an  idea.  The  very  thought  of  such  an 
entertainment  gives  a  foretaste  of  emptiness,  and  a  feeling 
that  recalls  Satan's  fall  through  chaos.  In  such  case  we 
should  be  thankful  even  for  the  cloud  whose  presence  there 
we  have  so  much  cause  to  rue.  In  truth,  there  always  was 
something  ludicrous  to  an  imagination  not  duly  broken  in 
to  reverence,  in  that  substratum  which  was,  and  was  not, 
what  we  see  and  touch,  and  had  to  be  once  distinguished 
from,  and  identified  with,  all  things  ;  in  which  all  that  we 
properly  perceive  inheres,  *  stuck  in  it,'  as  Coleridge  says, 

*  like  pins  in  a  pincushion.'  In  fact  it  is  on  an  emptiness 
that  the  notion  of  matter  is  ba^ed ;  reminding  us  of  the 
man  who  pored  in  vain  over  the  cane-bottomed  chair  to 
think, '  who  could  have  taken  all  those  holes  and  put  the 
cane  around  them.'  But  are  we  not  acting  rather  like  the 
savage,  who  begins  to  kick  his  idol  when  he  has  discovered 
that  he  is  not  a  god  after  all  ?  If  matter  play  little  part 
in  nature,  it  has  played  a  great  part  in  human  thought. 

W,  True.    That  necessary  inference,  or  belief,  of  matter 


344 


DIALOGUE  III. 


brings  home  to  man  a  proof,  from  which  he  cannot  escape, 
of  what  he  is.  Be  the  truth  of  nature  what  it  may,  it  has 
been  necessary  to  Mm  to  infer  an  inert,  a  dead  substratum  ; 
he  has  necessarily  ascribed  to  it  a  being  which  is  itself  a 
denial,  an  essence  which  insists  on  being  defined  by  nega- 
tives. To  him  there  is  defect  in  the  universe,  a  void  and 
darkness.  He  cannot  deny  that  that  which  he  consciously 
perceives  is  inert.     Matter  witnesses  against  him. 

R.  So  you  would  meet  any  one  who  should  deny  that 
what  we  are  conscious  of  perceiving  is  inert,  and  thus 
avoid  the  conclusion  of  man's  deadness. 

W,  I  should  point  him  to  the  matter-hypothesis,  and 
ask  :  What  does  it  mean  that  man  should  have  been  com- 
pelled to  infer  an  universal  not-action,  and  therewith  a 
not-acting  substance,  in  nature  ? 

R.  That  a  man  should  have  been  compelled  to  infer 
an  universal  not-light  in  nature  would  mean  that  he  was 
blind. 

W.  Does  it  alter  the  case  that  all  men  are  included 
in  it? 

R.  You  deny  an  inert  world.  Very  good.  You  do  not 
deny  that  there  is  a  world,  but  that  it  is  inert.  Show  us 
then  a  reason  why  we  feel  it  is  inert  when  it  is  not.  It  is 
simple  enough. 

W.  So  also  is  the  question  whether  there  is  matter :  it 
is  simply  whether  man  has  been  mistaken  in  thinking  the 
world  inert;  whether  he  has  erred  in  interpreting  his 
impressions  ?  We  have  given  up,  as  not  pertaining  to 
that  which  exists,  every  property  that  we  are  conscious  of 
perceiving,  except  shape.  Yet  what  reason  is  there  for 
retaining  that,  or  what  advantage  in  doing  so  ?  Some- 
thing different  from  color,  sound,  temperature,  odor,  causes 
us  to  perceive  all  these  things ;  then  why  not  something 
different  from  shape  cause  us  to  perceive  shai)e?  or  soinc- 


DIALOGUE   III. 


345 


thing  different  from  hardness  cause  us  to  perceive  hard- 
ness ?  Why  should  not  our  thouglits  be  raised  to  a  con- 
sistency among  themselves  ?  Why  inharmonious  laws  to 
regulate  our  perception  ?  especially  when  we  know  so  well 
that  shape  is  not  always  perceived  as  it  is,  but  varies  con- 
tinually. If  we  are  caused  to  perceive  a  certain  shape  by 
that  which  is  different  in  shape,  why  may  we  not  be  caused 
to  perceive  shape  altogether  by  something  different?  And 
as  for  resistance,  the  feeling  of  hardness  is  evidently 
dependent  upon  conditions  of  ourselves. 

R.  Few  things  would  be  hard  to  us,  if  our  fingers  were 
of  sharpened  steel,  and  our  muscles  iron  and  steam.  And 
again,  it  has  been  well  remarked  that  if  our  fingers  were 
magnetic,  and  a  central  point  between  them  were  of  like 
magnetic  character  so  as  to  repel  them,  our  feeling  must 
be  the  same  as  in  grasping  an  elastic  body. 

W,  In  short,  we  ought  to  have  outgrown  the  assumption 
that  the  cause  of  our  impressions  is  something  correspond- 
ing to  them.  It  could  not  be  so,  and  ought  not ;  if  it 
were,  how  could  we  obtain  a  knowledge  of  ourselves? 
We  deprive  our  consciousness  of  more  than  half  its  value, 
by  maintaining  the  existence  of  that  which  corresponds  to 
it.  We  rob  it  of  its  power  to  indicate,  by  its  modifica- 
tions, our  own  condition.  God  gives  us  in  our  conscious- 
ness an  opportunity  of  learning  two  things : — that  which 
exists,  and  our  own  state :  we  would  indolently  assume 
the  former,  and  ignore  the  latter.  But  in  repudiating  the 
one,  we  fail  also  of  the  other.  For,  not  caring  to  inquire 
what  in  our  own  condition  modifies  our  consciousness,  we 
merely  delude  ourselves  with  the  persuasion  that  we  know 
what  causes  it. 

i?.  But  physical  things  have  a  certain  reality.     You 
must  not  deny  this.    You  must  reconcile  your  idea  with 
the  feelings  of  mankind,  or  it  is  not  yet  perfect. 
15* 


346 


DIALOGUE  in. 


DIALOGUE  III. 


W,  I  agree  with  you.  But  I  think  the  reconciliation  is 
already  effected.  I  affirm,  in  the  true  sense,  the  reality  of 
these  things  that  we  perceive ;  for  how  does  it  make  a 
thing  less  real  to  us,  to  know  that  the  cause  of  our  per- 
ceiving it  is  something  not  corresponding  to  that  wliich 
we  are  conscious  of  ?  Is  fire  less  hot,  or  are  leaves  less 
green,  because  we  hold  that  we  are  caused  to  perceive  heat 
and  color  by  something  wholly  unlike  them  ?  Are  heat 
and  light  therefore  less  real  ?  Why  then  should  fire  or 
leaves  be  less  real,  if  we  are  caused  to  perceive  them  by 
something  different  ?  We  are  made  to  perceive  physical 
things  by  a  true  actual  existence  apart  from  us,  of  which 
they  give  us  sure  demonstration.  This  is  what  men  af- 
firm :  that  there  is  some  real  existence  acting  upon  me  to 
make  me  perceive,  and  through  my  perceiving  I  can  be 
sure  it  is. 

B.  Since  that  which  truly  acts  upon  us,  to  make  us 
perceive,  is  by  common  consent  above  our  comprehension, 
evidently  it  follows  that  what  we  are  conscious  of,  or  do 
comprehend,  is  not  that  very  existence  itself,  but  is  a 
phenomenon.  Now  if  we  ask  respecting  a  phenomenon 
whether  it  exists,  in  the  sense  of  truly  and  absolutely 
existing,  evidently  it  does  not :  such  existence  is  not  an 
appropriate  idea  to  apply  to  it.  It  exists  as  a  phenome- 
non ;  it  has  all  the  existence  which  belongs  to  its  nature, 
but  its  nature  is  such  that  true  existence  could  only  be 
absurdly  spoken  of  in  relation  to  it :  that  would  contradict 
our  own  definition.  But  that  which  we  thus  know  to  be 
but  phenomenal  is  real  to  our  experience,  thus  proving 
defect  in  man  :  a  defect  to  recognise  which,  and  trace  its 
effects,  is  the  key  to  human  life.  Our  error  has  been  of 
the  kind  called,  by  writers  on  logic,  that  of  mal-observa- 
iion.  All  the  circumstances  belonging  to  the  case  have 
not  been  taken  into  account ;  regard  not  having  been  paid 


347 


to  man^s  own  condition  in  interpreting  his  consciousness. 
Tliis  is  your  view. 

IV,  And  what  do  you  say  to  it  ? 

B,  I  accept  it.    It  is  but  applying  to  the  whole  experi- 
ence of  man  the  same  rules  that  we  apply  to  our  own 
experience  as  individuals ;  so  giving  consistency  to  our 
thoughts,  and  introducing  unity  into  our  mental  life.     The 
only  thing  that  appears  to  make  it  difficult  is  the  novelty. 
One  is  apt  to  imagine,  on  the  first  hearing,  that  the  exist- 
ence of  things  is  called  in  question  ;  or  that  you  deny  the 
reality  of  that  which  makes  us  perceive.    When  it  becomes 
clear  that  our  perception,  and  the  certain  existence  of  a 
reality  which  is  its  cause  and  object,  is  the  basis  of  the 
entire  argument  as  it  is  in  the  ordinary  view,  only  with  a 
reference  to  our  own  condition,  which  that  view  ignores 
or  omits  ;  then  there  is  no  more  difficulty.     We  ask  our 
selves  as  before  :  Why  do  we  perceive  these  things  ?  and 
we  answer — not,  as  before,  the  action  on  us  of  things  cor- 
responding to  the  impressions  we  are  immediately  con- 
scious of— but  the  action  of  things  more  excellent  than 
they,  which  impress  us  as  they  do  by  virtue  of  man's  con- 
dition.    We  do  herein  only  what  we  have  all  our  lives 
been  learning  to  do,  and  are  accustomed  to  do  in  every 
single  case.     We  are  no  more  at  a  loss  to  think  how  any 
particular  object  which  we  perceive  should  not  truly  exist 
as  sucli  an  object,  than  we  are  to  remember  that  the  bright 
spot  we  see  as  Venus  does  not  exist  as  such  a  spot.    That 
which  exists  is  different;  but  these  objects  are  to  man. 
Their  relative  existence  remains  the  same  :  it  is  not  as  if 
we  left  all  the  other  specks  in  the  heavens  as  existing,  and 
denied  one  of  them ;  but  we  affirm  of  each  one  that,  in 
truth,  it  is  part  of  a  whole  which  is  different  from  that  of 
which  we  have  the  impression.     When  a  person  looks  at 
the  stars  at  night,  he  would  not  deny  tlmt  there  are  specks 


S48 


DIALOGUE   III. 


DIALOGUE   III. 


349 


in  the  heavens.  Those  specks  have  the  existence  whicli 
belongs  to  them.  Tliey  exist  to  our  sense.  But  if  we  ask 
what  is  the  true  existence  indicated  by  them,  that  is 
another  question  :  we  must  take  into  consideration  man's 
condition,  his  present  mode  of  being. 

W,  Exactly  so.  Thus  'matter^  is  not  the  unknown 
existence  of  nature,  but  the  known  phenomenon.  It  is 
that  which  is  to  us ;  having  the  subjective  element  in  it, 
as  the  metaphysicians  say ;  which  is,  simply  enough,  defect. 
Not  that  we  have  truly  added  anything,  but  that  we  have 
not  adequately  apprehended. 

B.  That  will  do.  The  idea  of  matter  is  the  attempt  to 
conceive  an  existeoce,  or  substance,  corresponding  to  a 
defective  apprehension  of  that  which  exists ;  necessarily, 
therefore,  a  defective  substance ;  necessarily,  therefore,  a 
cause  of  perplexity,  to  be  escaped  from  only  by  remember- 
ing that  our  apprehension  is  defective,  and  that  there  is 
not  anything  corresponding  to  it,  but  only  something 
excelling  it.  For  matter,  being  a  substance  answering  to 
our  inadequate  apprehension,  necessarily  is  insufficient,  not 
equal  to  that  which  nature  is.  Thus  we  have  had  to  sup- 
pose also  those  marvellous  powers  in  ourselves,  which 
convert  mere  material  and  mechanical  processes  into  our 
exquisite  sensations.  We  have  had  to  supplement  the 
palpable  insufficiency  of  the  substance  we  have  supposed 
for  nature,  by  gifts  of  our  own.  And  the  whole  is  a 
mystery  not  to  be  inquired  into.  I  begin  to  share  your 
impatience  with  that  plan,  not  of  cutting,  but  of  tying 
knots.  For  who  is  to  judge  what  mysteries  are  to  be 
allowed,  and  what  are  not?  What  scheme  of  false  as- 
sumption might  not  shelter  itself  under  the  same  claim  ? 

W.  We  need  never  take  this  position,  of  predicting  the 
future  direction  of  human  thought,  if  we  will  allow  that 
our  way  of  regarding  its  problems  may  not  be  perfect. 


( 


We  may  safely  say  of  certain  questions  that  they  cannot 
be  answered  ;  but  we  can  never  say  that  they  may  not  be 
found  to  be  mistaken  questions,  and  that  the  true  problems 
at  issue  may  be  solved  another  way.  To  take  this  very 
case  of  our  sensations  as  an  instance :  doubtless,  no  man 
will  ever  be  able  to  say  how  matter  and  motion  can  make 
us  perceive  light ;  but  it  may  be  possible  for  men,  here- 
after, to  say  why  our  perceiving  light  made  us  necessarily 
infer  matter  and  motion  ;  and  also  to  discover  what  is  the 
true  cause  of  our  perceiving  light.  A  defective  feeling  on 
man's  part  already  gives  a  partial  answer  to  the  former 
question  ;  the  latter  waits.  We  find  an  insoluble  mystery 
here,  only  because  we  assume  as  certain  that  the  operation 
of  matter  is  the  cause  of  our  perceiving  light.  We  put  an 
inference,  necessary  to  us  in  ignorance,  as  if  it  were  a 
thing  ascertained  and  known.  In  a  word,  we  deal  by  the 
phenomenal  as  if  it  were  the  absolute. 
•  B,  Let  me  continue.  We  know  as  a  fact  that  men 
sometimes  feel  that  to  be  which  is  not.  We  do  so  in 
dreams.  Nay,  in  every  case  of  insufficient  knowledge,  in 
which  we  are  deceived  by  appearances,  the  same  thing 
may  be  said.  Every  one  who  has  an  inaccurate  impression 
respecting  things  around  him  may  be  said,  in  some  sense, 
to  feel  that  to  be  which  is  not.  Defect  on  our  part  has  a 
false  feeling  for  its  necessary  consequence.  Not  mere 
absence  of  right  apprehension,  but  positive  wrong  appre- 
hension, is  the  necessary  result  of  want  of  a  true  apprecia- 
tion of  that  with  which  we  have  to  do.  Feeling  that  to 
be  which  is  not,  is  a  familiar  and  well  known  fact  in 
human  experience.  It  is  natural  to  the  present  state  of 
man  ;  a  normal  part  of  his  present  training.  What  more 
reasonable  tlian  that  it  should  afford  the  explanation  of 
this  larger  experience,  which  we  call  the  perception  of  the 
material  world  ?    Man  feels  that  to  be  which  is  not : 


350 


1*IAL0GUE  III. 


DIALOGUE   III. 


351 


necessarily  and  rightly  feels  so,  by  reason  of  defect.  It  is 
his  work  to  learn  and  to  escape  from  the  error.  Therein 
is  a  sign  and  result  of  his  advance.  All  his  work  in 
gaining  knowledge  is  this  same  process  of  escaping  from 
error.  A  familiar  fact  of  our  experience  gives  the  key  to 
man's  feeling  in  respect  to  the  physical  world :  a  known 
and  natural  circumstance,  proved  in  ordinary  life,  applied 
to  a  larger  problem.  So  weight,  the  familiar  heaviness  of 
bodies  on  the  earth,  gives  the  solution  of  the  gravitation 
of  the  spheres.  And  the  known  defect  of  man  gives  evi- 
dence that  it  must  be  so.  A  defective  being  ought  to  feel 
that  to  be  which  is  not.  Else  were  all  the  intellectual 
laws  confounded. 

Admitting,  then,  that  in  his  feeling  of  this  physical 
(phenomenal)  world  man  feels  that  to  be  which  is  not, 
are  not  many  things  made  clear?  Apparently  hopeless 
mysteries  solved  at  once?  And  those  intricate  questions 
respecting  the  absolute  and  the  phenomenal,  tlie  temporal 
and  eternal,  the  realities  of  the  spiritual  and  the  shows 
and  forms  of  earth,  stripped  of  their  darkness?  The  dif- 
ference is  between  that  which  is  felt  by  man  to  be,  and 
that  which  is. 

W,  Have  we  not  continually  to  deal  with  children  on 
this  same  principle,  teaching  them  to  distinguish  between 
the  truth  of  things,  and  that  which  they  feel  to  be  ?  My 
little  boy  said  to  me  the  other  day  :  *  Papa,  the  lamp  jumps 
when  I  jump.'  To  him  there  was  a  jumping  lamp,  as  to  us 
there  is  a  material  world.  Jumping-ness  in  the  lamp  was 
as  much  a  necessary  inference  to  him,  as  materialness  in 
the  world  is  to  us.  He  had  not  learnt  to  understand  that 
the  mode  in  which  we  are  impressed  by  things  depends 
upon  our  own  condition.  Nor  have  we  yet  applied  this 
dearly  bought  knowledge  to  the  aggregate  of  man's  ex- 
perience.    We  puzzle  ourselves  about  the  material  world : 


* 


how  it  can  be,  what  it  is,  how  we  can  perceive  it,  how  we 
can  harmonize  it  with  our  belief  respecting  God  and 
spiritual  things,  how  we  can  reconcile  its  existence,  and 
the  things  that  take  place  in  it,  with  that  which  is  known 
in  the  conscience  and  the  heart ; — we  strive  over  this  prob- 
lem just  as  a  child  might  do,  who  should  strive  to  reconcile 
a  jumping  lamp  with  the  little  he  might  know  of  physics. 
We  should  say  to  him  :  Oh  child,  the  lamp  is  not  jumping 
as  it  is  to  you  ;  think  of  yourself.  So  we  should  say  to 
man  :  Oh  man,  the  world  is  not  material,  not  dead,  as  it  is 
to  you  ;  think  of  yourself. 

B.  Applying  one  law  to  the  individual  and  to  the  race  ; 
not  thinking  that  there  is  a  sudden  break  and  disharmony 
between  our  experience  as  individuals,  and  that  of  man  as 
man.  The  universality  of  human  experience — that  all  men 
perceive  in  the  same  way — shows  that  a  common  cause  is 
acting  upon  them,  and  that  they  are  partakers  of  a  common . 
nature  and  condition.  But  what  it  is  that  acts  on  them 
they  must  learn  by  the  joint  study,  at  once  of  what  they 
perceive,  and  what  their  own  nature  and  condition  are. 

W,  And  think  of  those  anomalies  in  our  philosophy, 
dreams  and  illusions  of  the  sense.  If  man's  experience  be 
as  you  have  said,  then  dreams  are  natural,  and  might  have 
been  foretold:  tliey  are  aids  to  our  thought.  Consider 
.how  utterly  they  overthrow  the  argument  from  our  con- 
sciousness, or  unavoidable  conviction,  for  true  existence  in 
the  objects  of  sense.  For  at  any  given  moment  we  have 
this  firm  conviction  of  the  reality  of  perceived  things, 
which  is  supposed  to  prove  them.  But  let  us  imagine  that 
the  next  minute  we  have  the  sensation  of  waking  up  from 
sleep,  followed  by  a  consciousness  as  of  different  things 
around  us.  Should  we  then  think  of  affirming  the  reality 
of  those  things  which  we  before  felt  ourselves  as  perceiving  ? 
Should  we  not  say  at  once  and  unhesitatingly  :  I  had  a 


r 


852 


DIALOGUE   III. 


dream?  There  is  no  possible  evidence  of  sense  wliicb 
would  not,  under  these  circumstances,  be  set  down  to 
dreaming.  But  how  can  that  be  valid  evidence  which  can 
thus  become  invalid  ?  Does  not  the  existence  of  dreams 
utterly  overthrow  the  pretence  of  such  authority  in  our 
convictions?  There  are  the  convictions  without  the  au- 
thority ;  and  occurring  in  such  a  way  that  we  must  own 
our  convictions  might  at  any  moment  be  shown  to  be 
unauthoritative  by  a  change  in  our  sensations. 

But  again  :  think  how  beautifully  dreams  and  illusions 
illustrate  the  problem  of  physical  perception.     What  are 
they  but  states  of  feeling  in  us,  which  we  irresistibly  refer 
to  objects  which  exist  only  to  our  feeling,  and  attribute  to 
causes  which  have  not  being  enough  to  cause  them  ?     We 
learn  afterwards  to  look  for  the  true  cause  in  other  things. 
Why  cannot  we  interpret  man^s  experience  in  physical 
perception,  as  we  have  learnt  to  interpret  dreams?     Are 
we  any  losers,  any  the  less  prepared  to  act  wisely  and 
truly,  because  we  understand  that  the  things  we  are  con- 
scious of  in  dreams  do  not  truly,  but  only  to  our  feeling, 
cause  our  consciousness  ?    This  perception  of  a  dead  world, 
of  a  world  that  cannot  be,  that  lands  us  in  utter  doubt 
when  we  investigate  it,  what  should  it  mean  but  that  man 
has  consciousness  produced  by  some  true  causes,  but  which 
he  feels  as  if  produced  by  others,  and  refers  to  others 
which  have  not  being  enough  to  cause  it?    The  feeling 
these  physical  things  to  be  realities  is  not  the  true  waking 
life  of  Man,  even  as  feeling  dreams  realities  is  not  the 
individual's  true  waking  life.   Man  walketh  in  a  vain  show. 
All  are  included  in  it ;  having  a  consciousness  truly  pro- 
duced by  one  cause,  and  referring  it  to  others  which  are 
unreal.     It  is  a  known  case,  and  no  hypothesis. 

But  we  may  go  farther.     Only  in  dreams  and  illusions 
have  we  any  means  of  getting  behind  our  consciousness,  as 


DIALOGUE  III. 


353 


it  were,  of  testing  it,  and  ascertaining  its  true  nature  and 
relation  to  the  things  consciously  perceived.  And  in  this 
case  we  find  that  something  different  from  the  objects  of 
our  conscious  perception  is  the  cause  of  our  perceiving 
them.  Should  we  not  think  that  the  law  of  our  perception 
is  given  us  in  this  ?  especially  since  it  is  confirmed  by  an 
analogous  experience  so  wide,  and  a  necessity  in  the  nature 
of  things  so  demonstrable.  In  dreams,  or  other  illusions, 
our  conscious  perceptions  of  inert  things,  being  transient 
and  limited  to  the  individual,  can  be  analyzed,  and  its 
nature  demonstrated.  But  that  great  consciousness  which 
includes  all  men  cannot  be  so  treated  ;  whatever  its  cause 
may  be,  it  does  not,  in  our  present  experience,  cease  its 
operation  ;  and  it  is  not  limited  to  one  or  a  few,  so  that  it 
can  be  tested  by  others.  Of  its  nature  we  must  judge  in  a 
different  way  :  not  by  direct  experience,  but  by  evidence 
and  proof.  Dreams  are,  in  relation  to  the  universal  con- 
scious perception,  as  the  perception  of  motion  in  particular 
objects,  through  our  own  individual  motion,  is  to  the  uni- 
versal perception  of  motion  in  the  heavens.  In  respect  to 
the  latter,  men  have  no  means  of  experimentally  testing 
their  consciousness ;  it  is  the  same  for  all  and  at  all  times ; 
but  the  particular  and  transient  motions  of  individuals 
give  them  the  means  of  interpreting  it,  as  due  to  a  state 
affecting  all  men.  So  do  our  particular  and  transient  per- 
ceptions of  physical  things  in  dreams,  wherein  we  know 
that  the  true  cause  is  different  from  that  which  is  con- 
sciously present  to  us,  give  us  the  means  of  interpreting  the 
universal  perception  of  physical  things,  as  due  to  a  different 
cause  operative  upon  all. 

Yet  farther :  in  dreams  and  such  illusions,  evidence  is 
given  that  the  workings  of  man's  own  structure,  so  to  speak, 
cause  him  to  have  conscious  feeling  of  physical  things 
around  him.    This  is  a  result  to  which  the  internal  mecha- 


354: 


DIALOGUE  III. 


DIALOGUE   III. 


855 


nism  works,  independently  of  the  cause  which  puts  it  into 
operation.  So  the  mad  or  intoxicated  man,  by  the  state  of 
his  own  body,  is  consciously  surrounded  by,  and  feels  every 
way  as  reality,  an  entire  world  of  his  own.  We,  looking 
on,  perceive  that  his  true  surroundings  are  wholly  different 
from  those  which  he  feels,  and  of  the  non-reality  of  which 
no  reasoning,  no  demonstration,  could  persuade  him.  How 
can  we  be  sure  Man  is  not  dreaming?  not  delirious? 
Does  not  every  language  affirm  him  so  ?  Do  not  his 
actions  bespeak  it?  Does  he  not  evidently  act  by  the 
world  not  according  to  its  nature,  and  fail ;  though  to  his 
own  feeling  he  seems  all  right  ?  Above  all  does  not  the 
divine  book  tell  him  in  plain  words  that  very  thing  ? 

R.  Disease,  which  is  in  respect  to  the  individual  a  defect 
of  life,  causes  him  consciously  to  perceive,  and  feel  as  act- 
ing upon  him,  things  that  do  not  truly  exist.  Here  is  the 
exact  parallel  to  that  which  you  assert  of  man.  And  do 
we  not  say,  that  one  great  evil  of  this  present  state  is  that 
we  feel  these  earthly  things  as  too  real,  that  they  have  an 
influence  over  us  which  they  ought  not  to  have,  and  would 
not  have  if  we  were  right.  '  If  we  could  but  escape  from 
the  influence  of  matter,'  we  say,  '  from  our  lower,  our  phys- 
ical nature.'    We  want,  not  to  feel  these  things  real. 

IF.  Thus  dreams  and  illusions  are  turned  from  casting 
doubt  on  our  belief,  into  supports  of  it ;  from  being  excep- 
tions, into  examples  of  our  experience.  I  conceive  no  man 
ever  felt  that  the  world  was  less  real,  because  of  dreams 
and  their  explanation.  So  can  no  one  feel  that  there  is 
less  reality  in  the  world  that  truly  is,  because  our  feeling 
respecting  the  world  of  phenomena  may  be  likened  to  a 
dream  on  the  part  of  man. 

R,  There  is  a  point  in  respect  to  dreams  which  you 
have  not  noticed.  They  seem  only  to  repeat  that  which 
has  been  wakingly  perceived,  being  representations  in  an 


i 


unreal  mode  (felt  as  real),  of  that  which  has  been  before 
experienced,  tliougli  in  wliolly  different  relations.  So  may 
we  not  believe  that  man's  feeling  of  reality  in  that  which 
is  unreal,  must  involve  some  prior  experience  of  a  true 
reality,  correspondent  though  differing  ? 

W.  I  do  not  venture  to  speculate  so  far.  I  feel,  in  the 
certainty  that  Nature  is,  truly,  not  inert  but  spiritual,  such 
a  joy  that  I  fear  to  peril  it  by  uniting  with  it  things  which 
I  do  not  feel  also  to  be  susceptible  of  proof.  But  if  that 
idea  were  correct,  it  would  answer  well  to  thoughts  re- 
specting man,  not  only  widely  spread  among  the  race,  but 
strongly  suggested  by  some  narratives  of  Scripture. 

R,  This  however  is  the  practical  point.  Here  is  the 
phenomenon  which  we  perceive,  and  feel  to  be, — this  ma- 
terial world.  What  tlien  are  we  to  think  of  that  which 
truly  exists,  and  of  ourselves  ?  These  questions  are  two 
halves,  mutually  dependent :  a  true  knowledge  of  that  which 
exists,  apart  from  us,  must  be  gained  through  a  recognition 
of  our  own  state  ;  a  knowledge  of  ourselves  must  be  gained 
by  investigation  of  that  which  we  perceive.  Surely  the 
means  of  solving  the  problem  which  all  man's  instincts 
prompt  him  to  attempt : — what  is  the  very  truth  of  things  ? 
are  thus  placed  in  his  hands.  And  when,  on  examination, 
it  is  found  that  this  which  is  perceived  and  felt  by  man 
exhibits  a  character  of  defectiveness — a  defectiveness  recog- 
nised at  once  by  the  intellect  in  science,  and  by  the  heart  in 
religion, — do  we  need  any  other  evidence  that  such  defect- 
iveness must  be  the  appearance  due  to  man's  imperfect 
appreciation  ?  Or,  if  other  evidence  were  needed,  is  it 
not  more  than  sufficiently  supplied  by  the  reasonings  which 
have  demonstrated  tliat  this  defective  world,  that  is  felt  bv 
us,  cannot  be  that  which  truly  exists  ;  disproving  its  exist- 
ence, and  mocking  us  either  with  an  idea  for  a  world,  or 
with  the  offer  of  believing  in  ft  world  as  existing,  which 


356 


DIALOGUE   III. 


yet  we  must  grant  can  be  disproved,  try  to  maintain  it  as 
we  will  ?  How  can  we  accept  either  of  these  alternatives  ? 
Must  we  not  say,  is  it  not  suflSciently  proved,  that  the 
defective  world,  that  is  felt  by  us  as  existing,  is  not  the 
true  world  that  is  ?  Should  we  not  gladly  take  the  defect- 
iveness for  our  own,  that  our  Universe  may  be  no  more 
defective  ;  and  that  its  existence  may  be  made  capable  of 
true  demonstration,  not  resting  on  the  more  than  doubtful 
accuracy  of  our  impressions  ? 

W.  But  what  should  you  say,  if  you  were  met  by  the 
argument  that  we  cannot  know  anything  about  what  truly 
acts  on  us,  but  that  man  can  only  know  phenomena,  and 
must  confine  his  attention  to  them  :  that  all  other  attempts 
must  be  vain  ? 

B.  I  should  say,  that  was  a  vain  argument,  being  an  a 
priori  one  on  a  subject  which  must  be  studied  experimen- 
tally. 

W,  But  if  it  were  replied,  that  the  attempt  has  been 
made,  and  has  failed,  and  that  it  is  proved  that  man  can 
only  know  phenomena  ? 

E.  Then  I  should  say  :  I  will  try  again  upon  another 
plan.  I  will  take  into  account  man's  own  state  as  influ- 
encing his  perceptions ;  I  will  remember  his  proved  defect. 
Acting  thus,  according  to  reason  and  experience,  perhaps 
the  result  may  be  different. 

W,  Suppose  you  were  told  that  it  is  merely  a  matter  of 
words  to  say  that  the  absolute  is  spiritual  ;  and  that,  al- 
though it  is  proved  not  to  be  inert  as  the  phenomenon  is, 
it  is  still  unknown  as  much  as  before  ? 

R.  I  should  say  that  it  is  not  so  :  that  true  action  com- 
bined with  unchangingness,  true  action  and  yet  necessary, 
true  action  yet  in  absolute  fulfilment  of  law — that  this  is 
as  much  known  to  be  holiness  as  anything  can  be  known 
at  all.     I  know  that  if  the  necessity  in  nature  only  seem 


DIALOGUE  III. 


357 


to  be  inertness,  then  it  is  truly  rightness.  But  I  cannot 
believe  that  any  one  will  use  this  argument  against  you. 
You  are  not  opposed  to  those  who  have  maintained  this 
position  respecting  the  sphere  of  human  knowledge.  To 
me  you  seem  entirely  to  embrace  and  affirm  their  position  ; 
and  to  carry  out  to  the  legitimate  conclusion  their  own 
premises. 

W.  If  I  understand  them  rightly,  I  do  so.  The  true 
positivist  doctrine  surely  is,  that  man  could  only  know  the 
Absolute  by  knowing  himself,  so  as  to  exclude  the  subject- 
ive element  from  that  which  he  perceives.  No  one,  so  far 
as  I  am  aware,  has  adduced  any  argument  to  show  that 
this  cannot  be  done.  I  am  satisfied  that  no  one  can  have 
any  unwillingness  that  it  should  be  done.  Towards  this 
result  I  seek  to  take  one  step  ;  as  it  seems  to  me  the  first, 
and  one  essential  to  any  farther  advance  in  that  direction. 
It  is  very  simple.  One  part  of  the  subjective,  or  human, 
element  in  the  phenomenon  is  its  defectiveness  :  the  phe- 
nomenal differs  from  the  absolute  in  its  inertness.  Surely 
it  is  a  truism. 

E.  A  truism  ? 

W,  Yes,  a  truism.  Do  you  think  I  thereby  diminish  its 
value  ?  I  think,  on  the  contrary,  that  overlooked  or  for- 
gotten truisms  are  among  the  most  important  of  all  things. 
What  is  geometry  but  truisms  applied  ?  The  certainty  of 
knowledge  seems  to  me  to  rest  upon  its  being  capable  of 
analysis  into  truisms. 

E.  Let  us  not  diverge  from  the  subject.  Show  me  the 
application  of  yours. 

W,  Thus.  The  absolute  essence  of  nature,  that  which 
IS,  is  not  inert :  the  phenomenon,  or  that  which  is  to  man's 
consciousness,  is  inert.  Therefore  man  introduces  inert- 
ness into  nature. 

E.  The  whole  thing  is  contained  in  that.     If  the  true 


858 


DIALOGUE    III. 


being  of  nature  cannot  be  inert,  then  the  inertness  which 
cliaracterizes  it  to  man's  consciousness  must  be  due  to  his 
own  state  ;  and  the  foundation  of  the  doctrine  of  man's 
deadness  seems  firmly  laid.  To  deny  nature  to  be  inert  is 
to  afl&rm  deadness  in  man.  Upon  that  link  the  entire  chain 
hangs  ;  whether  that  which  is  the  true  being  of  nature  can 
be  inert,  as  that  which  we  are  conscious  of  perceiving  is. 

W,  Can  it  ? 

R.  It  seems  to  me  that  it  cannot  be  so.  If  there  is  any 
certainty  at  all,  these  two  propositions  surely  possess  it. 
First,  that  the  true  existence  which  acts  on  us  does  act : 
and,  secondly,  that  if  we  do  not  know  this  true  existence, 
then  that  which  we  do  know  cannot  act,  because  it  is  not 
that  which  is. 

W.  If,  then,  we  know  the  absolute  in  nature  to  be  not 
inert,  is  not  that  some  knowledge  respecting  it  ?  Is  it  not 
a  beginning  of  knowledge  ?  And  if,  in  attempting  to  learn 
the  absolute  from  the  phenomenal,  we  have  to  remember  a 
deadness  in  man,  may  we  not  begin  the  investigation  with 
some  guidance,  with  some  hope  ? 

M.  I  do  not  think  any  consistent  positivist  would  op- 
pose you  there.  He  would  feel  that  you  do  not  deny  his 
position,  but  take  it  as  your  starting  point.  Their  doc- 
trine is  :  Let  us  attend  to  these  phenomenal  things  till  we 
have  better  means  of  knowing.  Not  aflSrming,  or  denying, 
of  the  future  ;  but  waiting  humbly  and  hopefully  for  what- 
ever that  future  may  bring. 

W,  In  that  I  would  be  one  of  them.  And  also,  in  treat- 
ing all  things  with  regard  to  the  progress  of  humanity. 
The  true  charm  of  that  svstem  is  in  its  subordinatinsr  all 
private  interests  to  the  welfare  of  man,  and  treating  all 
material  things  as  of  no  value  in  and  for  themselves,  call- 
ing them  phenomenal.  The  world  has  vast  obligations  to 
Aguste  Comte,  not  the  least  of  which  is  his  scientific  dem- 


DIALOGUE  III. 


359 


onstration  of  the  authority  of  the  moral  over  the  merely 
intellectual.  And  has  not  that  man  a  title  to  our  love, 
who  does  not  shrink  from  ridicule  in  advocating,  according 
to  his  best  thought,  the  claims  of  the  affections  ? 

B.  It  is  evident  that  to  regard  physical  things  as  only 
phenomena,  and  treat  the  intellect  as  dealing  only  with  the 
relative,  enthrones  the  moral  at  once  in  indisputable  suprem- 
acy. That  doctrine,  in  whatever  form  propounded,  must 
be  fundamentally  ethical.  If  it  be  not  so,  it  is  nothing— a 
science  merely  of  dreams.  Of  necessity,  it  concentrates  its 
regard  upon  the  spiritual  (for  positivism  does  not  disown 
the  word),  and  upon  the  spiritual  in  its  bearing  on  man. 

W,  Has  it  not  struck  you  that  my  practical  conclusion 
is  identical,  essentially,  with  that  of  the  positivist  ?  Regard 
in  all  things  man's  raising  up  :— from  his  dead  state,  I  say 
(feeling  the  words  of  the  New  Testament  to  be  the  exact 
words  I  want)— from  his  imperfection,  says  the  positivist. 
I  do  not  shrink  from  owning  the  oneness,  I  rejoice  in  it. 

R.  You  should  do  so. 

W,  And  I  have  larger  grounds  for  being  glad.  Is  there 
any  class  of  thinking  men  whom  I  oppose  ?  Do  I  not  truly 
agree  with  all  ? 

R.  That  has  been  held  impossible.    Yet  ways  of  doing 
such  impossibilities  may  be  found. 

W,  To  believe  the  felt  inertness  to  be  due  to  man  is  one. 
That  shall  set  you  free  from  all  necessity  of  contradiction. 
Once  deny  Ihat  the  Universe  is  truly  dead,  as  man  feels  it, 
and  you  need  deny  no  more.  The  '  everlasting  yes '  has 
made  its  home  upon  your  lips.  For  what  is  there  that  man 
affirms  that  you  do  not  also  affirm  ?  to  what  conviction  of 
his  heart,  or  intellect,  or  conscience,  to  what  aspiration  of 
his  nature,  need  you  turn  any  longer  a  deaf  ear  ?  Is  not 
the  whole  course  of  human  thought  just  that  which,  on  such 
premisses,  it  should  have  been  ?    Are  not  all  its  averments 


360 


DIALOGUE  III. 


embraced  alike  with  love;  none  rejected,  none  scorned, 
but  each,  with  tenderness  and  reverence,  receiving  its 
due  weight  and  honor  ?  Does  not  the  mental  life  of  man 
point  to  this  issue,  claim  this  victory  ?  Do  not  extremes 
meet  here  ?  the  most  rigid  logic  and  the  largest  love,  the 
steadiest  grasp  upon  experience  and  the  highest  raptures  of 
enthusiasm  ?  Is  it  not  the  making  one  of  doubt  and  faith  ? 
the  giving  up  of  all  that  is  not  proved,  and  the  holding 
fast  of  all  that  is  to  be  desired  ? 

R.   Do  you  mean  to  say  it  unites  opposite  doctrines, 
Positivism  for  example,  and  spiritual  religion  ? 

W,  It  unites  them,  if  to  unite  is  to  show  that  they  must 
be  one.  The  'unknown  absolute'  of  the  positivist  is  the 
*  spiritual '  of  the  theologian.  There  is  no  contradiction 
between  them.  The  assertion  on  the  one  side,  and  the  ad- 
mission on  the  other,  that  that  which  is  consciously  per- 
ceived (the  physical)  is  phenomenon  only,  breaks  down  the 
wall  of  partition.  These  are  two  halves  which  wait  a  pre- 
destined union.  If  this  world  be  but  phenomenon,  of  what 
is  it  the  phenomenon,  but  of  that  spiritual  world  which  our 
consciences  attest?  If  there  be  a  spiritual  world  present 
to  us,  operative  upon  us,  what  does  it  make  us  consciously 
perceive  ?  What  is  the  phenomenon  of  it,  but  this  physical 
world,  which  is  known  to  be  the  phenomenon  of  something 
different  from  itself?  Who  shall  forbid  the  consummation 
upon  earth  of  a  bridal  so  long  prepared  in  heaven  ?  For 
what  is  needed  but  the  opening,  on  each  side,  of  a  narrowed 
heart  and  niggard  hand  ?  Accept  the  result  of  examina- 
tion of  the  world,  which  says  this  known  physical  is  not  a 
true  existence  bnt  an  appearance  of  some  other ;  accept 
the  conscience,  which  affirms  another  existence  different 
from  the  physical ;  recognise  the  known  defect  of  man, 
which  must  cause  the  phenomenon  of  which  he  is  conscious 
to  differ  by  defect  from  that  whicli  is  :  and  what  remains 
to  do  ? 


Si* 


DIALOGUE  IlL 


361 


7?.  Here,  you  would  say,  is  a  known  phenomenon  (the 
physical)  inertly  necessary,  which  lacks  an  absolute  ;  and 
here,  a  known  absolute  (the  spiritual)  actively  necessary, 
or  holy,  which  lacks  a  phenomenon.  To  recognise  man's 
deadness,  which  makes  the  active  inert  to  him,  brings  them 
into  one. 

W,  And  the  theologian,  however  real  he  may  assert  this 
physical  to  be,  holds  that  it  has  only  an  inferior  mode  of 
existence  to  that  of  the  other  world  which  he  affirms.  This 
inferior  mode  of  existence  the  positivist  defines,  showing  it 
to  be  phenomenal ;  that  is,  an  apparent  existence  only,  due 
to  the  action  on  us  of  a  true  existence  which  is  different. 
And  both  agree  that  what  the  common  instinct  of  mankind 
affirms  is  this  inferior  existence  of  the  physical,  and  no 
more. 

R.  It  is  clear  that  positivism  necessarily  asserts  the  ex- 
istence of  another  world  than  this  with  which  our  senses 
are  conversant.  That  lies  at  the  basis  of  its  entire  doc- 
trine. If  it  were  not  so,  whatever  the  things  we  know 
might  be  they  could  not  be  '  phenomena.' 

W,  The  strife  is  at  an  end.  The  opposites  refuse  any 
more  to  be  opposed  ;  they  have  gravitated  into  one.  The 
strong  attraction  of  mutual  helpfulness  and  need  has  over- 
borne prejudice  and  caprice.  Each  in  the  other  recognises 
its  second  self,  the  twain  have  become  one ;  the  unknown 
want  interpreting  itself  in  its  fulfilment.  So  youth  and 
maiden  dwell  in  solitude,  or  meet  with  jealous  pride,  until 
each  finds  that  their  want  is  the  other.  For  does  not  positiv- 
ism lay  avowed  constraint  on  certain  tendencies  in  man,  and 
bid  him  hold  his  longings  under  rigid  check  ?  Does  not 
piety  acknowledge  not  less  restraint ;  confess  too  often  an 
opposedness  in  earthly  things,  distraction  rather  than  help 
from  daily  life,  a  necessity  to  check  the  current  of  sponta- 
neous thought,  and  leave  some  inquiries  unpursued  ?  Each 
16 


362 


DIALOGUE  III. 


gives  the  other  liberty.  The  poaitivist  receives  a  known 
for  his  unknown  absolute,  on  which  his  pent-up  thought 
may  expatiate  in  freedom  :  the  man  of  piety  casts  off  the 
weight  of  a  world  of  realities  opposed  to  godliness.  It  has 
become  the  very  sphere  of  godliness  itself,  the  nourishcr 
and  upholder  of  his  piety,  the  present  proof  and  evidence 
of  things  not  seen.  To  know  the  physical  to  be  the  phe- 
nomenon of  the  spiritual  makes  Christianity  and  science 
one. 

B,  That  were  a  union  man  should  celebrate  with  songs, 
and  earth  array  herself  in  festal  robes  to  greet.  But  if  the 
view  that  deadness  is  in  man  and  not  in  nature  thus  unites 
extremes,  which  had  no  thought  save  of  inextinguishable 
war,  does  all  that  is  between  find  equal  reconciliation  ? 

W,  Think  of  the  secularist  who  affirms  that  this  is  our 
only  world  ;  that  it  is  our  real,  and  sole  concern,  and  that 
its  laws  alone  are  to  be  studied.  He  means,  of  course,  the 
reality  and  very  fact  of  it ;  wherein  we  do  affirm  the  same 
as  he.  The  very  fact  of  this  world  is  the  real  and  only 
fact  with  which  we  have  concern.  Its  laws  are  the  only 
laws  for  us  to  know.  And  the  dreaming  mystic  who  op- 
poses him,  and  says  that  all  this  is  transient  and  unreal, 
and  turns  aside,  neglectful  of  his  daily  duties,  to  a  world 
unseen  ;  do  we  not  embrace  him  too  ?  And,  by  affirming 
more  fully  his  own  thought,  win  him  back  to  an  observant 
thoughtfulness  towards  things  around  him,  and  a  practical 
activity  ?  ^ 

Or  again,  are  not  the  idealist  and  the  asserters  of  com- 
mon sense  made  one  ?  With  the  former,  we  admit  that 
sensible  things,  being  phenomena,  can  exist  only  in  a  mind  : 
with  the  latter,  we  affirm  an  absolute  existence  (not  in  a 
mind),  as  being  that  which  is  the  true  cause  and  object  of 
perception.  We  do  but  carry  out  and  complete  that  posi- 
tion, excluding  from  that  of  which  the  existence  is  affirmed 


DIALOGUE   III. 


863 


the  qualities  which  are  made  to  appear  in  it  by  the  laws 
of  man's  perception.  As  they  exclude  color,  for  example, 
so  do  we  exclude  inertness  :  as  they  say,  that  which  exists 
is  not  itself  colored,  but  has  the  power  of  causing  man  to 
perceive  a  colored  object,  so  do  we  say,  that  which  exists 
is  not  itself  inert,  but  has  the  power  of  causing  man  to  per- 
ceive an  inert  object :  we  recognise  that  another  perceived 
quality  does  not  belong  to  that  which  exists.  We  are 
wholly  of  the  school  of  common  sense  ;  yet  give  our  hand 
to  its  ancient  foe,  and  claim  him  as  an  ally  ;  for  when  we 
add  inertness  to  the  list  of  subjective  qualities,  nature  ex- 
pands and  rises  so,  that  we  need  his  aid  to  grasp  the  over- 
whelming truth.  Those  also  we  agree  with,  who  affirm 
that  the  reason  we  perceive  material  things  in  time  and 
space  is,  that  they  are  in  time  and  space.  That  is  true. 
The  phenomena  are  in  time  and  space,  and  must  be  so  per- 
ceived, if  perceived  as  they  are.  For  time  and  space  may 
well  be  called  conditions  of  the  phenomenal :  they  belong  to 
it,  characterize  it,  are  inseparable  from  it.  And  he  to 
whom  phenomena  are  realities  must  be  in  time  and  space. 
He  only  can  be  not  so,  to  whom  phenomena  are  but  phenom- 
ena, and  not  realities.  So  we  do  not  oppose  those  who 
have  affirmed  that  space  and  time  belong  not  to  that  which 
truly  IS,  but  are  conditions  only  of  that  which  is  to  us. 
And  with  those  also  we  agree,  who  maintain  that  our  facul- 
ties must  be  trustworthy,  and  that  man  *  is  not  a  phantom 
in  a  world  of  phantoms.'  He  is  not.  He  is  a  defective 
being,  to  whose  apprehension  and  feeling  things  are  not  as 
they  truly  are ;  a  being  wanting  in  life,  amid  a  living  world. 
And  his  faculties  are  exactly  what  they  should  be ;  they 
teach  him  this  very  thing  in  the  best  and  rightest  way. 
And  finally,  we  must  not  forget  how  many  men  will  tell  us 
that  we  have  spared  our  proofs  that  the  world  is  truly 
spiritual ;  how  many  hold  that  to  be  self-evident,  and  treat 


364 


DIALOGUE  III. 


DIALOGUE  IIL 


865 


with  scorn  the  notion  of  a  dead  substratum.  To  these  also 
we  tender  our  allegiance,  and  confess  them  right ;  yet 
plead  with  them  for  recognition  of  their  brother's  right- 
ness  too,  in  affirming  that  a  deadness  is  perceived  by  man, 
and  that  a  dead  substance  must  have  been  inferred. 

B.  You  would  make  me  believe,  in  spite  of  myself,  that 
I  agree  with  every  one,  and  that  men  have  not  really  gone 
wrong  in  thinking  so  diversely  as  they  have.  One  unrec- 
tified  mistake  has  necessitated  all ;  and  all  contribute  their 
part  to  the  solution.  But  do  you  leave  no  scope  at  all  for 
the  warlike  instincts  of  our  nature,  nothing  for  us  verily 
to  oppose,  and  to  put  down  ?  It  were  ill  done ;  if  you 
made  men  to  be  at  peace  among  themselves,  they  would 
fall  with  unanimous  assault  on  you  :  the  instinct  were  too 
strong. 

W,  There  is  no  fear  :  scope  shall  not  fail  for  impulse  to 
strife ;  nor  absence  of  an  enemy  baulk  the  expectant  arm. 
Our  zeal  may  burn  against  the  self  in  us.  Against  that 
foe  we  may  wage  a  warfare  wherein  victory  will  be  true 
victory  ;  a  fight  that  is  verily  for  life. 

B.  That  is  true,  if  self  be  our  defect ;  for  then  to  have 
self  cast  out  from  us  is  truly  to  have  life  bestowed.  But  it 
must  be  done  for  us.  How  can  the  self  cast  out  the  self? 
How  can  Satan  cast  out  Satan  ?  Our  willingness  and  our 
exertion,  these  must  be  the  grace  of  God  within  us.  We 
labor,  yet  not  we.  But  speaking  of  our  self,  it  interests 
me  to  bring  this  view  of  it  into  connexion  with  Professor 
Ferrier's  admirable  book :  *  On  Being  and  Knoiving,^  in 
which  he  argues  so  powerfully  that  in  all  our  perception 
the  self  enters  as  an  element,  and  that,  apart  from  the  self, 
the  objects  we  are  conscious  of  cannot  exist,  being  indeed 
constituted  of  the  union  of  self  and  object.  Take  the  self 
as  defect,  a  negative  element,  and  this  view  is  the  same  as 
yours :  a  negative  element  introduced  into  nature  by  man's 


JH 


state  of  being.    Thus  too  the  phenomenon  is  reality  to  the 
self. 

W.  I  feel  it  a  great  confirmation.  If  this  self  be  man's 
defect  of  being,  and  his  self-consciousness  be  consciousness 
of  defect,  how  wide  a  harmony  is  in  the  present,  how  bright 
a  prospect  in  the  future.  All  this  life  is  to  cast  out  self  from 
man  ;  to  raise  him  from  a  consciousness  of  death  to  a  true 
living  consciousness.  To  this  end  all  things  work,  the  evil 
and  the  good.  Thus  working,  all  things  are  to  God's 
glory  ;  the  glory  of  His  giving  life  to  man. 

B.  To  accept  the  self  of  which  we  are  conscious  as  the 
opposite  to  being,  would  make  clear  many  problems.  How 
simple  then,  that  this  state  is  one  of  deadness  ;  how  simple 
that  sin  should  follow :  that  God  is  leading  the  world 
aright  through  this  dark  labyrinth.  How  simple  that  we 
should  be  deceived  by  a  false  feeling,  and  find  as  it  were  op- 
posing lives  within :  a  self-life,  which  is  truly  death,  and  a 
true  human  life,  the  gift  of  God.  How  simple  that  our 
best  plans  and  purposes,  based  on  the  self,  should  fail ;  that 
all  contrivances,  which  treat  this  self  as  if  it  were  man's 
being,  should  come  to  nought :  that  reason  should  seem  to 
be  baffled  here,  and  man's  best  judgment  leave  but  a  darker 
mystery,  as  his  best  efforts  have  so  often  left  but  deeper 
evil.  To  know  this  self  truly,  as  not  humanity  but  as  de- 
fect of  it,  would  turn  all  this  to  light :  thus  the  Christian 
code  of  absolute  self-abnegation  is  the  true  reason ;  thus 
utter  loss  is  perfect  gain  ;  thus  death  is  Life  indeed. 

W.  We  have  taken  a  self  view  of  the  world  and  of  all 
things,  and  it  will  not  do.  From  it  comes  darkness  in  the 
thought,  sin  in  the  life.  But  so  it  should  be.  How  could 
the  universe  be  truly  good  and  clear  to  man,  if  it  were  not 
dark  and  evil  to  his  present  self?  The  mystery  and  the 
misery  to  man,  as  he  is  now,  are  pledge  and  proof  of.  the 
goodness  that  he  shall  know  to  be,  and  ever  to  have 


* 


36(5 


DIALOGUE  IIL 


been,  when  there  is  no  more  death  in  hira  :  of  the  joy  that 
he  shall  feel  when  Life  is  perfect  in  him,  and  in  love  alone 
is  joy.  If  we  could  but  open  our  eyes  to  see  all  as  it  truly 
is,  not  as  it  is  to  self,  heaven  were  already  before  us.  For 
is  it  not  a  privilege  of  heaven  to  be  so  utterly  giv^n  up  to 
God,  so  filled  with  the  feeling  of  His  absolute  goodness, 
and  His  absolute  control,  that  the  gladness  of  the  joy  that 
is  in  Him  rises  ever  to  the  fulness  of  our  power  to  rejoice : 
leaves  us  no  time  nor  heart  to  think  of  self,  nor  care  for  it, 
because  our  soul  is  wholly  filled  with  Him  ? 


DIALOGUE  IV. 

R,  To  recognise  self  as  defect  seems  to  unite  departments 
of  thought  which  have,  hitherto,  been  treated  as  distinct : 
those,  namely,  which  relate  to  '  being'  and  to  character. 
The  question  of  *  existence'  ceases  to  be  a  mere  specula- 
tion ;  it  becomes  spiritual,  and  links  itself  with  our  deepest 
feelings.  To  be  is  to  cast  out  self.  We  seem  to  catch  a 
glimpse  of  a  deeper  reason  and  necessity  in  the  moral  ele- 
ments of  our  nature.  Virtue  must  be  in  self-control ;  holi- 
ness in  self-sacrifice.  The  moral  and  spiritual  laws  are 
primary  :  Man's  true  being  and  his  sacrifice  of  self  are  one. 
Life  can  only  be  affirmed  where  there  is  holiness.  Self- 
will  must  be  called  death  :  it  is  so. 

W.  It  is  most  true.  Being  and  holiness  are  inseparable, 
for  being  is  spiritual.  That  abstract  conception,  which 
passes  in  our  intellect  for  '  being,'  is  not  the  true  being. 
That  is  a  notion  merely,  and  has  only  arisen  through  our 
feeling  the  phenomenal  as  real.  There  is  no  such  inert 
existence  :  it  can  only  seem.  Being  is  a  word  of  infinite 
meaning,  which  refuses  to  be  thought.  It  carries  holi- 
ness with  it.  We  are  conscious  of  being  evil  because  we 
are  conscious  of  death.  Perhaps  a  good  thought  for  us 
is,  that  being  is  the  opposite  of  the  self  of  which  we  are 
conscious,  from  which  the  evil  comes.  So  perhaps  we  may 
deem  of  it  somewhat  more  worthily :  so  think  more  rightly 
of  God,  never  dissociating  our  thought  of  his  *  existence^ 

[367] 


86S 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


DIALOGUE  rv. 


from  moral  elements.  But  to  see  truly  what  it  is  to  be,  I 
know  of  but  one  object  on  which  to  fix  my  eye  :  on  Him  I 
look,  who  reveals  to  us  God. 

B,  In  Him  was  Life. 

W.  And  the  Life  is  the  Light  of  men  :  the  light  wherein 
we  see  what  being  is.  It  should  not  seem  a  strange  thing 
that  when  God  reveals  himself  to  us  it  is  as  a  sacrifice.  If 
we  had  had  life  within  us,  we  should  have  known  that  it 
could  be  only  so  :  that  there  is  no  other  way  in  which  Life 
can  be  shown  to  such  a  self  as  ours  ;  even  as  light  can  be 
revealed  in  darkness  only  as  its  destruction.  To  self, 
BEING  in  sacrifice. 

JR.  Because  'tis  Love.  God  is  not  a  substance  with 
*  powers'  inhering  in  it,  such  as  all  the  things  we  conceive 
must  be.  Surely  that  is  spiritual  which  is  Love,  in  the 
sense  in  which  God  is  Love :  unthinkable. 

W,  Say  rather,  that  IS.  For  that  alone  is  active.  Action 
and  love  are  one  :  how  can  Action  be  except  in  giving  ;  in 
the  outflowing  of  the  life  and  power  within  ?  To  us,  who 
have  this  consciousness  of  self,  Action  must  be  the  giving 
up  of  self. 

B.  So  our  only  true  action  is  in  self-sacrifice,  in  holiness. 
That  is  to  be  truly  man.  This  might  be  your  answer,  if  it 
should  be  urged  that  man  is  not  only  defective,  but  that 
there  is  in  him  positive  wickedness. 

W.  I  affirm  that  also.  The  two  affirmations  are  truly 
one.  We  need  only  to  understand  that  being  is  not  to  be 
thought ;  that  being  is  holy ;  then  is  defect,  or  deadness, 
also  unholiness,  the  opposite  to  love.  When  we  are  speak- 
ing of  that  which  truly  is,  and  not  merely  of  that  which  is 
felt  by  us  to  be  but  is  not,  being  is  a  word  of  spiritual 
meaning.  And  defect  is  self:  it  brings  the  sin  which  is 
in  self-assertion. 

M,   Sin    is   involved   in   the   affirmation   of   deadness. 


369 


I 


because  Life  is  not  a  mere  passive  state,  but  is  holi- 
ness? 

IV,  Even  so  ;  only  that  which  is  but  phenomenal  is  pas- 
sive. The  reality  of  life  is  spiritual,  as  is  all  true  real- 
itv. 

R  The  essential  point  appears  to  be  the  admitted  doc- 
trine, that  that  which  is— or  being— does  not  correspond 
to  that  which  we  conceive :  or,  in  other  words,  that  being 
cannot  be  thought.  We  must,  therefore,  admit  it  above 
thought,  and  recognise  in  our  necessary  modes  of  thinking 
indications  of  our  own  state,  not  rules  by  which  we  may 
judge  of  that  which  is. 

W.  The  rule  I  would  suggest  is  very  simple.     That 
which  exists  causes  man  to  be  intellectually  impressed  in 
certain  ways,  which  depend  partly  on  its  nature,  partly  on 
his  condition.     There  is,  therefore,  no  authority  in  man's 
intellectual  impressions  (his  necessary,  or  logical,  thoughts) 
in  respect  to  that  which^exists  j  but  the  problem  we  have 
to  solve  is,  in  every  case,  to  show  how  that  which  exists 
should  cause  such  thought  in  man,  his  own  condition  being 
ascertained  and  allowed  for.    One  application  of  this  prin- 
ciple I  have  argued  for,  in  respect  to  our  necessary  concep- 
tion of  nature  as  inert ;  but  doubtless  it  has  many  others. 
The  intellect  is  subordinate  to  the  conscience  :  that  which 
the  moral  sense  affirms,  tested  and  corrected  by  the  intel- 
lect as  the  intellect  is  by  sense,  is  really  true  for  man  ;  is 
that  which  we  may  rely  upon,  which  will  not  betray  and 
deceive.     And  I  venture  to  feel  sure,  that  that  which  is 
really  true  for  Man  is  also  really,  and  absolutely,  true.    If 
man  have  his  true  Being  then  he  is  a  standard  of  Being. 
He  is  not  so  now  through  his  defect,  because  of  the  nature 
of  the  self  that  is  in  him. 

E,   Man's  instinct  that  he  can  judge  of  Being,  can 
measure  existence  by  his  own  standard,  is  not  in  itself  a 
16* 


370 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


371 


mistaken  one  ;  it  is  vitiated  only  by  his  unrecognised 
defect  ? 

W.  That  is  what  I  mean.  His  self— a  negation — is 
mixed  with  everything  he  thinks  ;  and  thereby  his  thoughts 
are  falsified.  His  feeling,  that  things  are  and  must  be  as 
they  are  to  him,  is  a  feeling  which  rightly  pertains  to  liim  as 
man,  and  will  be  justified  when  his  deadness  is  done  away. 

B,  Then  things  will  be  to  him  as  they  are ;  and  the 
assertion,  '  this  must  be  as  it  is  to  us/  or,  '  this  that  is  to 
my  consciousness  must  be,^  will  not  any  more  be  false. 
That  it  is  false  now  proves  this  not  the  true  human  life — 
not  the  LIFE  of  man. 

W.  Thus  it  is  that  the  assertion  of  man's  immediate 
knowledge  of  the  spiritual,  of  his  direct  intuition  of  divine 
things,  fails  to  gain  the  assent  of  men.  It  is  true  of  man 
only  in  his  truly  living  state.  It  must  have  been  asserted  ; 
but  ignorance  of  man's  deadness  vitiates  the  statement. 
Like  the  assertion  of  man's  freedom,  it  applies  to  a  man- 
hood which  is  not  ours,  to  a  life  which  is  yet  to  be  be- 
stowed. 

B,  Can  this  be  the  heresy  of  those  who  said  '  that  the 
Resurrection  is  already  past'?  affirming  that  man  has 
already  his  true  life,  is  already  raised  up  from  his  dead 
state,  while  this  self  is  yet  in  him  ? 

W,  Does  it  not  seem  natural  ?  What  other  '  Resurrec- 
tion' could  be  supposed  already  past  ? 

B.  Can  it  be  that  the  writers  of  the  New  Testament 
sometimes  speak  of  the  Resurrection  of  the  dead  in  this 
Bense? 

W,  I  wish  you  would  examine.  In  the  meantime,  ob- 
serve how  a  defect  in  man  explains  the  apparent  inconsis- 
tency of  telling  men  not  to  regard  that  as  real,  which  yet 
is  real  to  them  :  it  shows,  not  only  that  we  may,  but  that 
we  must,  rise  above  that  which  has  been  called  the  human 


14 


point  of  view  :  that  is  the  self  point  of  view,  and  it  is  em- 
phatically not  the  human.  That  which  is  to  the  self,  to 
the  Man  is  not;  and  for  manhood  must  be  treated  so. 
To  say  :  *  This  is  to  me'  does  not  settle  the  question  ;  we 
must  analyze  this  *  me.' 

R.  Thus  when  the  things  which  are  real  to  the  self,— 
wealth,  comfort,  honor,  all  material  and  intellectual  things, 
—are  set  aside  and  disregarded,  treated  as  nought,  for  right 
or  love,  then  we  behold  manhood.  Then  we  see  men  treat 
things  as  they  are.  Those  are  the  heroes,  to  wliom  all 
eyes  turn  with  love,  at  whose  name  every  heart  beats 
higher.  They  show  to  man  his  manhood,  and  he  recog- 
nises it  with  reverence  and  joy. 

W,  They  bear  witness  of  the  life  ;  but  the  Power  that 
can  make  us  live  must  come  from  a  higher  than  they.  He 
in  whom  The  Son  of  Man  was  revealed,  who  shows  us  God 
in  very  deed,  and  makes  clear  this  tangled  web  of  earthly 
life  ;  He  who  has  borne  the  w^orld's  sins,  and  taken  away 
its  guilt ;  He  only,  and  the  Spirit  that  proceeds  from  Him 
and  from  His  Father,  is  the  Lord  and  Giver  of  Life. 

B.  It  is  no  wonder  that  the  world  lias  clung  so  to  His 
memory ;  that  no  abuses  practised  in  His  name,  nor  sub- 
tleness of  reasoning,  could  loose  the  impassioned  grasp 
with  which  a  despairing  world  holds  His  Divinity. 

W.  Nor  that  bad  arguments  have  been  used  to  justify  a 
faith  that  could  not  be  renounced. 

B,  'Tis  not  a  question  of  argument  or  proof.  Christ 
shows  us  God.  The  sight  eclipses  all  glories  else,  and 
constrains  our  dazzled  eyes.  Many  things  we  know  and 
love,  but  when  we  think  of  God  we  think  of  Jesus. 

W.  Of  Jesus  the  Redeemer,  who  makes  v^s  know  that  we 
are  dead,  and  gives  us  life.  And  so  explains  all  things  to 
us,  and  reveals  creation's  secret. 

i?,  We  find  it  difficult  to  admit  a  state  of  consciousness 


872 


DIALOGUE   IV. 


to  be  one  of  death.  Yet  is  it  not  quite  natural  ?  What 
death  is  surely  depends  on  what  life  is.  If  life  is  conscious 
life,  ought  not  death  to  be  conscious  death?  If  life  in- 
volves holiness,  ought  not  death  to  involve  sinfulness? 
Why  should  not  the  only  possible  opposite  to  life  involve 
such  consciousness  of  self  as  ours  ?  Whether  thinirs  are, 
or  are  not,  as  man  feels  them,  depends  on  whether  there  is 
something  wrong  with  respect  to  him. 

W,  Each  of  us  may  answer  that  question  for  him- 
self. 

B,  In  reference  to  the  ideas  now  entertained  of  nature, 
are  we  not  in  the  position  of  maintaining  the  existence  of 
that  which  is  to  thought,  while  yet  we  assert  that  that 
which  exists  cannot  be  thought ;  asserting,  as  it  were,  an 
inconceivable  in  that  which  we  conceive  ? 

W,  I  think  this  is  exactly  our  embarrassment.  We  have 
learnt  that  the  true  existence  of  nature  cannot  be  conceived, 
yet  we  cannot  give  up  the  existence  of  that  which  we  con- 
ceive. We  are  thus  involved  in  an  obvious  contradiction, 
unless  we  are  content  to  say  that  we  have  not  any  true 
knowledge  at  all,  and  so  give  up  religion.  But  is  not  tlie 
reason  evident  ?  We  ought  to  come  to  this  difficulty  ;  it 
is  the  very  thing  that  compels  us  to  recognise  man's  dead- 
ness  : — his  realities  are  not  real.  For  'tis  certain  that  the 
things  we  think  are  real  to  us. 

E,  Our  life  is  a  life  in  phenomena  :  admit  it  not  man's 
true  life — our  self  as  not  man's  being — and  all  is  clear. 

W.  Otherwise  only  impenetrable  confusion,  which  all 
attempts  to  clear  up  make  only  the  more  manifest.  But 
how  simple  the  solution  is :  it  is  only  to  remember  that 
there  is  defect  in  man. 

B,  I  have  observed  the  extreme  obviousness  and  sim- 
plicity of  that  which  you  lay  as  the  foundation.  It  seems 
strange  that  so  much  should  come  from  merely  taking  into 


DIALOGUE   IV. 


373 


account,  in  our  thoughts,  a  fact  which  we  never  think  of 
denying. 

JF.  But  it  is  perfectly  natural  that  it  should  be  so. 
AVhat  we  do,  thereby,  is  to  take  another  point  of  view,  and 
all  things  of  course  look  different. 

li.  You  do  but  say,  also,  that  there  is  only  one  universe, 
in  which  you  cannot  be  held  to  affirm  a  novelty.  The  word 
proves  that  some  men  have  been  of  your  opinion. 

IK  It  is  a  man's  native  opinion ;  nor  do  I  know  a 
stronger  presumption  in  favor  of  any  view,  than  that  it 
shows  the  hidden  truthfulness  of  words,  bringing  more 
clearly  to  men's  thought  what  they  have  been  unconsciously 
affirming.  Men  are  only  compelled  to  say  there  is  more 
than  one  universe,  because  they  think  this  universe  truly 
is  inert,  dead,  bad,  as  they  feel  it. 

E,  You  come  to  the  old  point  again  :  consider  yourself. 

W.  How  can  I  leave  it,  when  it  gives  me  such  light  and 
joy,  such  deliverance  from  bondage  to  my  own  impressions  ? 
But  I  was  about  to  observe,  that  it  seems  to  be  in  that 
which  we  think,  or  conceive,  that  man's  defect  is  especially 
evident:  there  his  self  is  brought  into  clear  relief.  So 
that  our  plan,  of  trying  to  hold  that  as  existing  which 
answers  to  our  conceptions,  is  in  some  respects  the  worst 
of  all.  It  would  be,  in  some  sense,  better  to  affirm  the 
existence  of  that  which  is  to  our  sensation  ;  of  the  light  and 
sound,  e.  g.,  which  our  senses  feel,  rather  than  of  the 
motion  which  our  thoughts  conceive.  And  we  should 
surely  have  as  good  ground  for  the  one  as  for  the  other  ; 
wholly  subjective  as  both  are. 

E.  Motion  itself,  of  course,  is  merely  a  matter  of  sen- 
suous perception,  as  much  as  light  or  warmth.  We  do  but 
substitute  an  idea  derived  from  one  mode  of  sensuous  im- 
pression for  other  similar  impressions.  We  have  not  any- 
thing less  subjective  in  motion  than  in  music. 


374 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


TF.  I  think  not.  I  did  not  mean  to  pay  you  so  ill  a 
compliment  as  to  suppose  you  unaware  of  this.  But  has  it 
never  struck  you  how  the  life  and  being  of  things  are 
turned  out  of  them  by  our  attempts  to  grasp  them  in 
thought  ?  Take  the  case  of  nature,  for  example  :  this 
glorious  world,  which  fills  us  with  such  emotions,  is  such  a 
wonderful  existence.  We  try  to  think  it,  to  bring  it  before 
us  in  orderly  conceptions,  to  present  it  clearly  to  our 
minds  : — What  has  happened  ?  what  mystery,  what  in- 
verted miracle,  what  miserable  abortion  is  here  ?  Where 
has  NATURE  disappeared,  leaving  nothing  in  our  thoughts 
but  that  ridiculous  caput  mortuum  of  matter  and  motion  ? 
But  this  result  is  what  should  be  :  we  were  trying  to  think 
BEING.  Again  :  take  holiness  or  virtue.  Think  it :  and 
what  is  left  ?  a  scheme  for  the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest 
number,  perhaps.  Or  yet  again  :  what  word  fills  us  with 
such  a  feeling  of  awe,  with  such  a  consciousness  of  the 
presence  of  unspeakable  existence,  as  the  word  Eternal  ? 
But  when  we  think  it,  or  try  to  put  it  into  conceptions, 
what  have  we?  Nothing  but  duration  without  limits, 
time  that  does  not  end ;  no  Existence  at  all,  but  a  mode 
only,  and  one  which  must  be  defined  by  negatives. — 
Why  should  we  perplex  ourselves  so  vainly  ?  Do  we  not 
know  that  we  cannot  think  that  which  is  ? 

B.  We  discover  that  we  cannot,  by  feeling  that  it 
escapes  us  when  we  try. 

W.  Then  by  what  we  are  obliged  to  think  we  know 
ourselves.  Our  being  such  as  we  are  makes  the  eternal,  to 
our  thought,  nothing  but  an  everlasting  emptiness.  But 
in  truth  we  know  the  eternal  better,  even  as  we  know 
nature  better,  and  holiness  better.  When  love  is  peifect, 
and  drives  away  every  thought  but  of  the  object  loved,  all 
reference  to  reward,  all  regard  to  anything  to  be  obtained  ; 
when  the  soul  is  wholly  satisfied  in  self-surrender,  this  now 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


375 


of  utter  and  final  loss  being  enough  of  time  ;  when  in  love 
the  whole  life  is  gathered  up  into  the  moment,  and  it  is  in 
this  present  giving,  though  it  be  the  giving  up  of  all  which 
leaves  no  future,  that  the  life  is  found  ;  that  reveals  to  us 
Eternity.  That  makes  us  know  what  the  Eternal  Life  may 
be,  when  time  is  not. 

B.  But  we  must  think  of  the  future,  and  ask,  what  shall 
we  have  ?    It  is  our  nature. 

W.  It  is.  Have  we  not  been  told  that  men  are  dead  ? 
It  belongs  to  this  self  that  is  in  us  to  do  so. 

B.  Then  we  must  also  ask  that  question  in  religion.  We 
must  look  forward  to  a  future,  and  consider  what  our  lot 
shall  be. 

W.  True.  And  the  question  is  answered  for  us.  We 
shall  be  made  alive :  freed  from  the  necessity  of  asking 
that  question  any  more. 

B.  But  Christ  had  respect  to  the  reward  set  before  Him. 

W.  And  what  is  it,  but  that  of  saving  man  ? 

B.  That  also  must  be  ours.  We  are  to  enter  into  the 
joy  of  our  Lord  :  that  which  is  Christ's  joy  also  to  be  ours. 

W.  Awe  and  gladness  struggle  on  our  tongues.  How 
should  we  speak,  yet  how  be  silent?  Heaven  grows  so 
beautiful,  and  so  near.  It  is  no  more  afar  off,  but  now. 
Now  we  have  Christ's  joy,  the  joy  of  man's  redemption, 
and  our  part  in  it. 

B.  I  see  heaven  ;  and  at  the  same  time  see  why  earth 
must  be  what  it  it.  For  if  the  joy  of  heaven  is  in  Love,  in 
giving,  in  the  utter  sacrifice  of  all  that  is  to  self,  then  it  is 
also  now.  Then  are  we  in  heaven  and  know  it  not,  then 
are  we  in  heaven  and  turn  it  into  hell. 

W.  Because  we  love  the  self,  which  God  hates. 

B.  Because  we  have  not  life,  and  do  not  know.  Man 
would  not  be  so  foolish  if  he  knew.  If  he  knew,  in  very 
deed,  what  God  is.  and  what  man,  and  what  it  is  to  be. 


376 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


W.  Therefore  does  God  reveal  Himself. 

R,  He  reveals  Himself  as  the  bearer  of  the  sins  of  the 
world,  as  the  sacrifice  for  transgression,  as  the  utter  giver- 
np,  to  be  one  with  whom  is  wholly  to  deny  the  self ;  to 
show  us,  so,  the  fact  of  Being.     That  is  what  He  is. 

W,  It  is  what  He  is.  All  life  is  revealed  to  us  in  that 
revelation  to  us  of  God.  Heaven^s  light  has  broken  through 
earth's  darkness.  To  live  is  to  bear,  to  give,  to  be  a  will- 
ing sacrifice  :  to  be  dead— let  us  not  speak  of  it,  it  does 
not  need  to  be  described. 

R.  Love  shall  never  cease.  Only  our  wrong  feeling 
makes  this  difficult  to  us.  If  we  could  think  of  ourselves 
80  changed,  that  what  is  sacrifice  to  us  should  be  perfect 
joy,  that  loss  should  be  no  loss  because  there  would  be  no 
wish  to  gain,  that  giving  up  and  sacrificing  should  be  per- 
fect happiness,  and  nothing  else  even  seera  like  happiness 
to  us,  then  we  might  understand  it.  Is  it  that  you  mean 
by  the  self  being  destroyed  ? 

W,  That  is  it.  But  remember,  we  cannot  conceive  it. 
Do  not  try  to  think  it.  That  makes  the  eternal  an  ever- 
lasting time.  These  are  things  that  man  conceives  not, 
but  God  reveals  by  His  Spirit. 

R,  So  these  physical  things,  which  are  real  to  us  now, 
and  necessitate  our  self-regard,  the  conditions  that  make  it 
impossible  for  us  to  conceive  that  state  of  absolute  self- 
abnegation,  shall  be  no  more  real  to  us.  Then  man  shall 
not  be  any  more  in  a  physical  world,  but  in  the  spiritual  ? 

W.  I  look  upon  it  so.  I  regard  spiritual,  and  not 
merely  physical,  changes  as  determining  the  state  of  man. 

i?.  I  am  glad  our  conversation  has  taken  this  course, 
because  it  has  removed,  without  my  expressly  stating  them* 
two  feelings  which  were,  perhaps,  the  chief  obstacles 
to  my  acceptance  of  your  views.  The  first  of  these  was, 
that  your  representation  of  the  work  of  Christ  seemed  to 


DIALOGUE   IV. 


377 


\ 


exclude  the  idea  of  expiation.  You  dwelt  so  much  upon 
Christ's  revealing  God,  that  it  seemed  as  if  you  overlooked 
his  sacrificial  work. 

W,  You  see  that  I  do  not.  It  is  a  sacrifice  for  us  that 
Christ  reveals  God. 

R,  Do  you  leave  the  views  commonly  called  evangelical 
quite  untouched  ? 

W,  I  deny  no  part  of  them  ;  but  I  feel  their  power  and 
extent  increased.  And  this  in  two  respects  :  for  while  I 
assert  the  absolute  justice  of  God,  and  His  punishment  of 
sin  by  the  infliction  of  suflfering,  I  think  more  of  Christ's 
saving  us  from  damnation,  or  from  being  wicked.  And 
surely  this  is  to  make  stronger  the  ground  of  our  love  to 
Him.  For  is  not  being  wicked  a  worse  thing  than  suffer- 
ing ?  and  do  we  not  love  a  Saviour  in  proportion  to  the 
evil  of  that  from  which  he  sacrifices  Himself  to  save  us  ? 
We  must  love  Christ  more  for  giving  himself  to  save  us 
from  sin,  than  from  suffering,  because  it  is  a  worse  evil. 
To  put  most  prominently  forward  Christ's  saving  us  from 
suffering,  as  the  ground  of  love  to  Him,  is  to  invert  the  laws 
of  human  nature.    It  is  never  done  in  the  New  Testament. 

R,  That  is  true.  I  have  often  noticed  that  Christ  is 
always  said  to  redeem  us  from  sin,  from  iniquity,  from  vain 
conversation,  from  this  present  evil  world. 

W,  And  again :  if  Christ  by  His  sacrifice  saves  the 
whole  world,  must  we  not  love  Him  more  for  that  than 
for  saving  only  a  part?  It  is  impossible  that  our  love 
should  not  be  greater  to  Christ  for  saving  all  men,  than 
for  saving  ourselves  alone,  or  ourselves  and  some  others 
only.  However  much  we  may  love  Him  as  our  own 
Saviour,  how  can  we  help  loving  Him  more  as  the  Saviour 
of  the  whole  world. 

R,  It  increases  the  power  of  the  evangelical  motives  to 
believe  the  absolute  salvation  ? 


378 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


379 


W.  Infinitely.  It  renders  them  unutterably  vast ; 
leaving  nothing  more  to  be  desired,  or  conceived,  of  good. 

ii.  But  that  is  only  if  we  see  that  men  are  now  dead, 
are  now  in  hell,  and  damned. 

W,  True.  It  demands  that  we  should  not  banish  the 
eternal  into  the  future,  and  should  admit  that  to  like  sin  is 
worse  than  to  suffer.    Surely  it  is  not  a  large  demand. 

i?.  It  is  not  a  large  deman4  if  we  can  give  up  our 
natural  impressions,  and  admit  that  they  may  not  be  true. 
But  the  other  feeling  to  which  I  referred  as  being  removed 
without  my  stating  it,  was  this  :  that  you  had  constructed 
a  system  of  philosophy,  and  adapted  the  words  of  Scripture 
to  it. 

W.  A  jealousy  in  that  respect  has  ample  justification. 
Try  me  by  the  words  of  Scripture,  and  see  if  it  be  so. 

B.  I  have  said  that  the  impression  is  already  removed. 
Yet  it  seems  strange  that  if  this  be  true  it  should  be  so 
new. 

W.  It  is  not  strange. 

B.  Not  strange,  I  grant,  if  we  look  at  the  history  of  the 
world,  and  the  progress  of  human  thought  from  ignorance 
to  knowledge;  but  it  is  strange  that  the  very  Gospel 
should  come  to  us  as  something  new. 

W.  It  does  not  come  as  something  new. 

B,  Do  not  be  captious  on  my  words.  These  thoughts 
are  to  us  both  new  and  strange. 

W.  I  cannot  permit  you  to  say  so.  Look  into  your  own 
heart,  and  tell  me  again  if  they  be  so. 

B,  If  you  mean  that  men  have  always  felt  in  their 
hearts  that  to  be  sinful  is  the  worst  of  all  things  ;  that  the 
redemption  they  most  need  is  a  redemption  from  the  evil 
of  their  own  nature  ;  that  the  eternal  things  are  the  reali- 
ties with  which  they  have  now  the  true  concern ;  this  of 
course  is  not  new. 


sayin^ 


{ 


JF^iWhat  else  should  I  mean  ?  what  else  have  I  been 
g  ?  Do  not  you  see  that  I  have  but  translated  the 
everlasting  language  of  the  heart  into  that  of  the  intellect ; 
that  I  have  only  laid  aside  conceptions  of  the  thought 
which  crushed  and  overbore  the  convictions  of  the  man  ? 

B.  That  certain  intellectual  notions,  unavoidable  in  our 
imperfect  knowledge,  have  been  fighting  against  that  which 
we  feel  to  be  true,  and  have  made  a  struggle  in  our  life 
which  may  be  put  to  rest  by  taking  a  truer  intellectual 
point  of  view  ? 

W,  You  have  said  all.  I  have  nothing  to  add,  except 
that  these  intellectual  notions  have  done  as  much  violence 
to  the  words  of  the  New  Testament  as  to  the  nature  of  man. 

B,  Can  that  be  the  reason  there  has  been  so  much  diffi- 
culty in  understanding  it,  and  reconciling  its  various 
passages?  that  it  has  been  so  hard  to  gather  a  uniform 
and  consistent  meaning  from  the  whole  ? 

W.  Do  not  let  this  question  cease  to  be  asked  till  you 
have  fairly  answered  it.  Meanwhile  let  me  suggest  my 
answer :  we  have  had  a  philosophy  which  has  prevented 
us  from  believing  the  Gospel. 

B,  What  do  you  mean  by  the  Gospel? 

W.  That  Christ  redeems  the  world. 

B,  But  men  become  worse  by  sinful  deeds,  become  more 
and  more  dead  to  good,  and  are  not  saved. 

W,  I  believe  the  Gospel  none  the  less. 

B,  But  ought  we  not  to  see  things  otherwise,  if  it  were 
true  that  all  men  shall  be  drawn  to  Christ,  subdued  by 
Him,  in  that  sense  ? 

W,  Ought  we  to  walk  by  sight  or  by  faith  ? 

B.  Do  you  mean  to  say  that  we  must  lay  aside  all  these 
natural  feelings,  and  rest  simply  upon  those  declarations  ? 

W.  If  you  claim  to  believe  in  Christ,  surely  you  should 
not  find  that  hard.    But  if  it  be,  see  what  helps  are  given 


380 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


881 


to  a  feeble  faith.  Only  understand  that  to  redeem  man  is 
to  alter  his  nature  and  being,  to  make  him  new,  and  then 
there  is  no  more  any  difficulty.  Sin  exists  to  this  end. 
Because  man  is  wrong,  and  has  to  be  made  right,  therefore 
he  sins  and  goes  from  worse  to  worse.  How  should  he  be 
brought  to  self-sacrifice  in  any  other  way  than  by  learning 
how  evil  his  self  is  ? 

i?.  But  do  all  the  passages  in  the  New  Testament  agree 
with  this  view  ? 

W,  Do  they  not  ?  Does  not  the  whole  book  become  plain 
and  clear  ?    Does  not  new  light  break  in  upon  every  part  ? 

B,  These  are  questions  not  to  be  answered  now.  If  we 
could  see  that  the  saving  of  the  whole  world  from  a  state 
of  death  was  truly  the  doctrine  of  the  New  Testament, 
how  gladly  we  should  believe  it. 

W.  It  must  be  believed  as  soon  as  the  opinions  which 
make  it  seem  opposed  to  the  conscience  are  removed  :  as 
soon  as  we  can  see  that  to  like  sin  is  infinitely  bad,  and 
that  the  bliss  of  heaven  is  in  sacrifice  of  self  The  heart 
of  man  cries  out  for  it,  and  refuses  to  be  comforted.  This 
is  the  reason  I  have  sought  to  show  that  science  proves 
man's  deadness.  It  is  the  false  opinion  of  liis  life,  making 
us  think  this  state  his  probation,  which  alone  binds  our 
hands  from  grasping  the  gift  of  God,  our  ears  from 
crediting  the  glad  news  of  salvation. 

B,  But  if  the  absolute  redemption  of  man  be  the  truth, 
why  has  it  been  so  long  unknown,  so  long  rejected  ? 

W,  Even  that  question  may  be  answered.  It  could  not 
have  been  otherwise.  Had  not  man  to  learn  nature  ?  had 
he  not  to  discover  the  deadness  in  himself  which  makes 
the  universe  dead  to  him  ?  What  other  course  could  he 
have  gone  through  than  this  that  has  been  ?  Does  not  St. 
Paul  affirm  the  necessity  of  a  falling  away  ? 

M,  I  am  tempted  to  say,  that  can  apply  only  to  times 


[ 


» that  are  past,  but  I  am  silenced  by  the  thought  that  I 
should  only  assert  that  /  could  not  be  deceived. 

W.  Is  the  world  now  so  good,  religion  so  triumphant, 
piety  so  pure  and  living,  that  we,  of  all  ages,  alone  may 
say,  we  cannot  be  mistaken  ? 

B.  If  it  be  true  that  the  world  is  redeemed,  there  is  no 
more  such  mystery  in  God  permitting  error ;  even  error 
tliat  might  embrace  ourselves.  It  no  more  involves  con- 
sequences which  we  cannot  face. 

W,  True.  To  believe  the  absolute  redemption  gives  us 
patience,  not  only  for  ourselves  but  for  the  world.  Patience 
is  one  of  the  fruits  of  faith. 

B,  God  does  suffer  error,  inconceivable,  unutterable, 
long  enduring.  We  cannot  shut  our  eyes  to  facts.  It  is 
part  of  God's  discipline  of  the  world  that  men  should  err  : 
should  feel  sure  they  have  His  truth  when  they  are  up- 
holding their  own  thoughts. 

W.  Is  not  this,  in  brief,  the  history  of  Christianity? 
Christ  and  the  Apostles  proclaimed  the  absolute  redemp- 
tion of  the  world,  conjoining  it  with  that  firm  assertion  of 
death,  and  condemnation,  and  judgment,  from  which  it  is 
inseparable.  But  when  the  first  Christians,  who  had  re- 
ceived this  belief  mixed  with  much  ignorance,  came  in 
contact  witli  the  world,  with  philosophy,  they  lost  it. 
They  found  men  busy  with  the  question  of  good  and  evil ; 
and  the  Church  fell  as  man  had  done.  They  gave  up  the 
Gospel,  the  death  of  all  and  the  absolute  redemption  of  all 
tlirough  believing  in  Christ,  and  took  in  its  stead  the 
natural  opinion,  the  philosophical  doctrine,  of  the  future 
well-being  of  a  part  and  the  ruin  of  the  rest ;  accommo- 
dating to  it  the  Christian  doctrine  of  faith,  in  the  best 
way  they  could.  That  is  the  death  of  Christianity.  The 
conscience  was  the  chief  agent  in  it.  Tlio  Christians  re- 
adopted  the  heathen  view,  of  man's  life  and  probation, 


382 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


instead  of  the  Christian  one  of  liis  death  and  salvation. 
The  difference  between  these  lies  fundamentally  in  the 
conception  of  humanity.  The  christian  Manhood  is  dif- 
ferent from  the  heathen :  the  one  accepts  this ;  the  other 
asserts  a  higher. 

E.  Then  you  do  not  reject  the  everlasting  punishment 
of  men  on  the  ground  that  it  is  opposed  to  reason  ? 

W,  No.  I  could  not.  I  hold  that  doctrine  to  rest 
wliolly  on  human  opinion.  It  is  a  result  which  flows  from 
our  natural  impressions,  and  has  been  imposed  on  the  New 
Testament  thereby :  we  see  it  there  because  it  is  in  our 
thoughts.  How  could  I  deny  it  to  be  a  natural  opinion  of 
mankind  when  it  is  stated  most  explicitly  in  heathen 
writings  anterior  to  the  New  Testament  ? 

B.  It  is  Plato's  doctrine.  The  everlasting  misery  of  the 
worst  part  of  mankind  is  very  clearly  set  forth  in  the 
Phcedo. 

W,  Nor  do  I  see  any  escape  from  that  opinion,  except 
by  accepting  the  spiritual  representation  of  man.  My 
hope  for  the  world  is  in  that  which  is  written,  of  '  God 
our  Saviour,  who  will  have  all  men  to  be  saved,  and  come 
to  a  knowledge  of  the  truth.'  Does  God  will  that  which 
shall  not  be  ?  And  besides,  I  see  in  Christ  a  revelation 
which  makes  me  know  that  this  is  man's  death,  a  state  from 
which  he  is  to  be  raised,  not  an  experiment. 

R,  But  why  do  you  lay  such  stress  upon  the  saving  of 
all  men  ?  You  speak  as  if,  supposing  that  were  not,  there 
were  nothing. 

W,  I  feel  so.  It  is  that  which  saves  me.  The  knowl- 
edge of  that  is  the  turning  point  of  life  and  death,  of  the 
possibility  of  absolute  self-abnegation. 

R.  Is  it  so  great  a  difference  ? 

W,  So  great  ?  Does  not  your  heart  bound  with  exulta- 
tion at  the  thought  that  you  might,  doing  no  violence  to 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


383 


any  principle  you  have  learnt  to  revere,  giving  up  nothing 
of  reverence  for  justice,  of  hatred  to  sin,  of  value  for  the 
Saviour's  sacrifice,  believe  the  salvation  of  the  world  ?  In 
knowing  that,  a  burden  as  great  as  that  of  our  own  sins  is 
taken  from  our  hearts,  a  joy-giving  and  sanctifying  power, 
not  less  than  that  of  our  own  forgiveness,  diffuses  itself 
through  the  soul,  and  makes  itself  felt  in  the  life. 

R.  Let  me  put  you  on  your  guard  against  a  misappre- 
hension to  which  you  might  be  exposed.  Do  you  mean  to 
imply  that  the  absolute  redemption  of  men  can  be  believed 
only  on  condition  of  accepting  your  opinions  respecting 
the  physical  world  ? 

W.  Emphatically  I  do  not.     If  I  might  be  so  misunder- 
stood I  thank  you  for  remarking  it.   The  absolute  redemp- 
tion is  to  be  believed  wholly  on  the  ground  that  the  New 
Testament  affirms  it,  and  may  equally  be  believed  by  all. 
But  I  think  that  the  view  I  have  suggested  of  nature  is 
essentially  a  christian  one.    If  science  teaches  us  man's 
deadness,  how  can  we  but  see  in  Christ  a  Redeemer  from 
death  ?    I  think  that  false  opinions  respecting  the  world 
have  prevented  us  from  accepting  the  plain  statements  of 
the  New  Testament,  therefore  I  have  brought  my  attempt 
to  show  those  opinions  to  be  false  into  connexion  with 
those  statements.   I  seek  only  to  rectify  a  connexion  which 
already  exists,  not  to  establish  a  new  one.     What  I  affirm 
is  that  men  do  read  the  New  Testament  according  to  their 
opinions  respecting  the  world,  and  that  they  misread  it 
because  those  opinions  are  not  true.    With  better  theoreti- 
cal opinions  they  would  cease  to  coerce  its  words. 

R.  There  are  innumerable  other  questions  I  might  ask 
you  : — What  is  the  exact  meaning  when  you  speak  of 
deadness  in  man  ?  how,  then,  are  we  to  consider  man  as 
existing  ?  what  relations  does  he  bear  to  the  other  exist- 
ence in  the  universe  ?  wliy  should  there  be  death  in  him, 


884 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


385 


and  how  can  it  be  without  infringing  on  the  perfect  good- 
ness of  the  world  ? 

W.  These  questions  are  most  legitimate ;  but  I  cannot 
enter  on  them.  They  belong  to  another  sphere  of  discus- 
sion. Even  if  I  granted  (which  I  do  not)  that  no  answer 
could  as  yet  be  given  to  them,  I  could  not  admit  that  the 
argument  I  have  carried  on  would  suffer  in  the  least.  I 
have  undertaken  to  give  evidence  of  a  fact — deadness  in 
man — the  explanation,  or  reason  of  it  is  wholly  another 
question.  I  cannot  consent  to  mix  up  the  two ;  nor  to 
make  any  thoughts  I  may  entertain  respecting  the  latter  a 
mere  pendant  to  the  discussion  of  the  former.  First  let 
VLB  determine  whether  it  is  true  that  man's  deadness  (or 
defect)  is  the  cause  of  his  feeling  the  universe  to  be  dead 
(or  defective).  If  we  answer  that  question  in  the  affirma- 
tive, a  new  inquiry  lies  before  us  : — What  is  the  meaning, 
what  is  the  cause,  what  are  the  relations,  of  this  fact?  I 
should  be  most  happy  to  enter  upon  it. 

E.  But  is  not  the  word  death,  or  deadness,  an  undesir- 
able one  to  use  ? 

W,  To  me  it  seems  of  all  terms  the  best.  But  the  word 
is  unimportant ;  if  you  object  to  it,  dismiss  it  from  your 
thoughts,  and  take  up  the  question  without  it.  This  I  say  : 
Man  feels  that  which  is  apart  from  him  to  be  inert,  not 
because  it  is  as  he  feels  it,  but  because  of  his  own  condi- 
tion ;  if  his  feeling  were  true,  he  would  feel  himself  in 
presence  only  of  existence  that  is  spiritual ;  it  is  through 
a  want  in  him  that  his  feeling  is  caused  to  be  untrue. 
This  is  my  position.  Let  the  question  of  deadness  be  put 
aside.  If  I  have  erred  in  using  the  term,  the  issue  raised 
and  the  arguments  have  just  the  same  force  and  value,  the 
same  claim  to  be  weighed  and  answered. 

R.  I  think  you  have  a  right  to  take  this  ground.  Perhaps 
I  might  as  reasonably  call  on  a  geometrician  to  explain 


space  before  I  would  receive  his  demonstrations,  as  insist 
on  your  explaining  why  and  how  there  is  a  want  of  life  in 
man,  before  I  admit  the  fact.  The  question  is  one  of  evi- 
dence, not  of  explanations. 

W.  I  seek  to  place  it  on  this  ground  ;  but  it  is  not  neces- 
sary to  avoid  the  other,  if  the  distinction  between  the  proof 
and  the  explanation  of  a  fact  is  borne  in  mind.  I  will  tell 
you,  briefly,  what  appears  to  me  a  possible  view.  May  not 
the  death  of  man  be  the  loss  of  a  lower,  for  the  bestowment 
of  a  higher,  existence  ?  may  it  not  be  a  necessary  condition 
of  his  life,  because  of  the  ver}^  nature  of  life  as  involving 
Love  and  Sacrifice  ?  May  not  this  deadness  be  a  result  of 
an  act  of  sacrifice  ;  itself  part  of  the  universal  life  ? — death 
relatively  to  man,  but  absolutely  life  ?  Is  not  all  life  that 
we  know  based  on  death,  and  springing  out  of  it?  Is  not 
every  life  purchased  at  the  cost  of  other  life  ?  Except  a 
grain  of  wheat  fall  into  the  ground  and  die,  does  it  not 
abide  alone  ?  Has  not  science,  also,  taught  us  this  ?  Life 
for  life,  it  is  the  law  of  Nature.  Why  is  not  man^s  death 
a  mode  in  which  this  law  of  love  appears  ?  But  do  not  let 
these  speculations  influence  you ;  my  argument  is  the  same, 
whether  they  be  true  or  false. 

B.  There  may  be  indications  of  a  reasonable  treatment 
of  these  subjects,  and  whatever  thought  is  true  must  bring 
us  into  the  presence  of  more  and  greater  unsolved  problems 
than  that  of  which  it  gives  the  solution.  If  your  view  left 
none  such,  it  were  self-condemned.  But  let  me  ask  one 
more  question.  How  is  it  that  we  see  in  geology  so  long 
a  course  of  physical  existence  before  man  existed  at  all  ? 

W.  Do  you  really  feel  that  to  be  a  question  ? 

E.  I  am  half  ashamed  to  ask  it.  You  would  say,  that 
is  the  phenomenon.  It  is  the  spiritual  that  is  physical 
to  us. 

W.  In  the  same  way  we  see  how  it  is  that  we  think  and 
17 


386 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


387 


feel  by  physical  brains  and  nerves.    I  base  the  proof  of  my 
position  on  its  practical  success  in  solving  problems.   This 
is  ever  the  ultimate  proof.    Let  a  proposed  view  be  put  to 
the  test,  and  see  how  it  will  work. — Surely  it  is  the  very 
redudio  ad  absurdum  of  the  hypothesis  of  matter,  that  we 
must,  on  that  view,  attribute  our  consciousness  to  material 
changes  in  the  brain  as  its  true  cause,  and  conceive  that 
there  is  some  place,  or  point,  at  which  a  mechanical  impulse, 
or  chemical  process,  becomes  a  sensation  or  a  thouglit. 
But  on  the  view  that  the  physical  is  the  mode  in  which  the 
spiritual  is  perceived  by  man,  this  strange  fact  assumes  an 
entirely  new  aspect.    It  ought  to  be  ;  it  might  be  foretold. 
For  if  the  true  cause  of  our  consciousness  is  spiritual  action 
on  us>  how  should  it  appear  to  us  ?    Evidently  as  physical 
action.    Brain  and  nerves,  or  something  equivalent,  ought 
to  be  the  '  phenomenal '  instruments  of  consciousness,  if  this 
view  be  right. 
B.  I  must  think  farther  about  this. 
W.  Let  it  pass.    But  is  it  not  evident  that  man  must, 
naturally,  at  first  take  a  view  of  all  things  which  makes 
himself  the  centre,  and  must  he  not  afterwards  attain  a 
view  which  includes  a  recognition  of  his  own  position  as 
subordinate  ?  is  it  not  necessary  that  he  should  first  be  con- 
fident in  his  own  impressions,  and  afterwards  learn  to  cor- 
rect them  by  a  consideration  of  himself?    I  seek  only  to 
take  this  step.    It  must,  at  some  time,  be  taken. 

B,  I  see  that  the  latter  mode  of  thinking  is  the  more 
humble. 

W,  And  is  it  not  also  the  more  rational  ?  Is  it  possible 
that  we  can  be  right  in  continuing  to  set  up  ourselves  as 
the  standard  of  existence  ?  No  other  course  is  possible  at 
first,  but  the  delusion  exists  only  that  it  may  be  escaped 
from. 


x< 


B,  That  which  it  has  been  right  for  men  to  do,  formerly, 
it  may  be  right  for  them  to  cease  doing  now  ? 

W,  Does  it  cast  blame  upon  the  past  to  say  that  it  has 
prepared  for  a  better  future  ?  You  see  what  we  do  in  thus 
altering  our  view.  All  phenomena  remain  the  same,  but 
we  transfer  our  thought  of  existence  from  them,  to  some- 
thing that  is  more  and  worthier  than  they.  They  are  as 
they  were  before  to  our  impressions  and  our  use,  but  their 
relation  to  our  thought  is  altered.  We  think  of  them  not 
as  the  cause  of  man's  experience,  but  as  being  present  to 
his  consciousness  through  the  operation  of  a  true  causct 
more  real,  more  certain,  more  adapted  to  produce  the 
known  effects,  than  they. 

B,  This  also  I  understand.  Might  you  not  express  your 
conception  thus  :—  Physical  things  are  to  our  touch  but  are 
not  to  our  thought,  as  appearances  are  to  our  sight  but 
are  not  to  our  touch  ?  Our  thought  should  be  of  one  thing, 
while  our  sensuous  impression  is  of  another.  That  which 
is  to  our  sense  is  less  than  that  which  is,  and  considered  in 
and  by  itself,  therefore,  must  be  unreal. 

W,  So  we  constantly  associate  all  our  consciousness 
with  the  operation  of  existence  above  that  which  our  im- 
pressions represent.  Our  thought  and  regard  are  ever 
directed  to  the  spiritual,  which  alone  we  recognise  as 
Cause.  We  live  now  in  the  spiritual  world,  and 'find  it 
perfectly  simple  that  the  physical  is  but  the  phenomenon, 
and  not  the  fact.  The  difficulty  would  be  to  think  other- 
wise. To  do  so  we  should  have  to  ignore  the  convictions 
that  are  most  certain  to  us.  To  forget  that  we  are  in  a 
world  that  is  spiritual,  surrounded  by  being  that  is  Holy, 
we  must  put  away  the  feeling  of  our  own  defectiveness,  the 
assurance  of  God's  infinitude,  the  consciousness  that  there 
is  ACTION  around  us  ;  we  must  silence  the  reason,  stifle  the 


388 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


1/ 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


389 


conscience,  crush  the  heart,  enslave  ourselves  to  sense 
against  our  better  knowledge. 

B,  We  act  by  appearances  as  existing  to  sight ;  may  we 
not  act  by  physical  things  as  existing  to  touch,  remember- 
ing, in  each  case,  that  that  which  exists  is  different  from 
that  of  which  we  have  the  impression  ?  And  as  we  ration- 
ally explain  our  impressions  of  sight  by  our  relation  to  that 
which  is  to  our  touch,  so  may  we  not  seek  a  rational  ex- 
planation of  our  impressions  of  touch  in  our  relation  to 
that  true  existence  which  we  know  must  be  ?  If  we  find  it 
so  simple  that  we  consciously  see  that  which  does  not  exist, 
may  we  not  find  it  equally  simple  that  we  consciously  touch 
that  which  does  not  exist  ? 

W,  Here  you  approach,  again,  the  true  secret  of  the 
difficulty  that  is  felt  in  giving  up  the  existence  of  the  phys- 
ical ;  our  consciousness  of  action  in  it,  and  upon  it.  This 
it  is  that  makes  it  real  to  us.  Merely  passive  impressions, 
such  as  those  of  sight,  we  have  no  difficulty  in  understand- 
ing to  have  no  existence  corresponding  to  them.  But  if 
our  active  impressions,  or  those  of  touch,  have  truly  no 
existence  corresponding  to  them,  then  we  must  recognise 
defect  in  ourselves  ;  we  must  regard  our  self  in  a  different 
light.  This  is  the  very  point  of  the  argument.  If  physical 
things  are  demonstrated  not  to  have  true  existence,  then 
an  unsuspected  defect  is  demonstrated  in  man. 

B.  So  your  argument  has  been,  to  prove  that  that  which 
is  inert  cannot  be  that  which  exists. 

W,  Yes.  Keep  that  question  fairly  before  you.  If  that 
which  EXISTS  cannot  be  inert,  then  it  is  defect  in  man  which 
makes  him  feel  himself  in  a  physical  world  ;  he  is  not  truly 
so.  And  all  the  practical  inferences  which  follow  claim  a 
practical  regard. 

B,  But  there  is  one  point  more.  In  our  action  on  the 
physical,  all  men  alike  perceive  the  results  of  that  wliich 


ea^ih  individual  does.    If  I  move  anything,  it  is  moved  to 
all  men  s  perceptions,  not  only  to  my  own. 

W.  You  do  right  to  make  this  remark.'  The  individual 
action  has  relation  to  man's  universal  conscious  perception. 
It  IS  not  merely  an  individual,  but  a  universal  relation, 
that  !s  involved.  Deeper  bonds  unite  men  to  their  fellows 
than  upon  our  natural  ideas  we  should  have  suspected.  ' 
£.  Is  not  this  another  question  which  needs  future  in- 
vestigation ?  Can  you  explain  how  this  commmiity  of 
perception  takes  place,  according  to  your  view  ? 

W.  Only  theoretically.  And  I  especially  wish  to  avoid 
weakening  my  argument  by  having  recourse  to  theoretical 
explanations.  I  prefer  to  leave  that  question,  altogether, 
as  a  matter  for  inquiry.  I  need  not  again  remind  you  that 
unexplained  circumstances  do  not  weaken  the  force  of  a 
sound  argument.  One  chief  advantage  of  a  truer  mode 
01  thmking  is,  that  it  opens  new  channels  to  our  thought 
Nor  need  I  point  out  to  you  that  there  are  easy  ways  of 
reconciling  this  particular  circumstance  with  that  which  I 
affirm,  if  we  demanded  plausibility  alone. 

Ji.  Rather  than  give  an  explanation  unsupported  by 
proof,  you  prefer  that  it  should  stand  as  a  circumstance 
not  accounted  for  ? 

W.  I  do.  The  more  unexplained  facts  we  clearly  ap- 
prehend, the  more  hopeful  is  our  prospect  of  increasing 
knowledge.  But  think,  if  our  entire  experience  is  not  such 
as  It  should  be,  if  the  inertness  is  due  to  man.  Not  one  or 
two  things,  but  all  that  we  are  conscious  of,  or  perceive. 
Must  there  not  be  an  unvarying  phenomenon,  under  cause 
and  effect,  felt  by  us  as  real :  must  not  this  impress  us  with 
the  feeling  of  force,  correspondent  to  the  inertness  within- 
and  could  'force'  be  other  than  such  as  it  is  in  this  phe- 
nomenon, which  we  call  the  physical  ?  Does  it  not  obey 
'  necessary'  laws,  laws  conforming  to  the  reasonable  facnl- 


390 


DIALOGUE  IV. 


DL4L0GUE   IV. 


391 


ties  in  man  ?  Must  not  force,  indeed,  be  conformed  to, 
and  determined  in  its  operation  by,  the  resistance  it  im- 
plies ?  And  is  not  this  uniformity,  of  passive  force  con- 
trolled by  force, — force  as  it  were  self-controlled — the  very 
mode  under  which  holiness  should  appear  to  a  being  to 
whose  apprehension  the  action  is  wanting  ?  Does  it  not 
speak  to  us,  trumpet-tongued,  of  the  control  of  passion  in 
ourselves  ? 

B,  That  is  a  striking  fact.  In  nature  no  force,  no  pas- 
sion, is  uncontrolled. 

W.  It  is  an  absolute  Tightness  greets  us  there.  There- 
fore we  love  it  so,  and  trust  it :  the  Manhood  in  us  claims 
brotherhood  with  the  Life  around.  Our  uncontrolled  en- 
slaving passions,  only,  separate  us  from  nature.  And  how 
well,  and  naturally  we  understand  that  a  holy  action,  an 
act  of  Love  and  Rightness,  is  the  sole  cause  of  all  that  is. 
No  accident  to  baulk,  no  passive  law  to  crush,  no  deadness 
abhorrent  to  our  souls,  mocks  us  or  constrains.  One  cause 
for  all,  alike  for  all.  The  hairs  of  our  head  are  numbered, 
nor  falls  a  sparrow  to  the  ground  without  our  Father.  All 
is  God's  act  and  deed  :  weighted  with  the  infinite  Necessity 
which  is  His  sole  prerogative  ;  constrained,  but  by  His  love 
alone  ;  inevitable,  but  because  He  is  Holy. 

B,  Should  we  say  of  each  thing  that  afifects  us,  each 
operation  of  which  we  are  conscious  on  ourselves :  This 
God  does  ;  His  act  is  the  cause  of  my  feeling  thus  ?  and 
if  we  ask,  why  it  is,  answer  ourselves  :  *  it  must  be  by  His 
nature '?  and  in  tracing  physical  necessities,  remember  that 
we  are  tracing  the  evidence  of  his  unchangingness  ? 

W.  Long  ago  was  the  question  asked  :  Shall  not  the 
judge  of  all  the  earth  do  right  ?  Science  has  answered 
it ;  He  does. 

B.  That  is  not  enough. 

W,  It  is  not.     He  is  not  only  holy.     If  righteousness 


( 


looks  down  from  heaven,  truth  springs  up  from  the  earth. 
Righteousness  and  peace  have  kissed  each  other  God 
gives  life  to  man,  His  life  for  man.  He  has  shown  us  what 
He  does,  and  why.  So  we  can  rest  and  trust  in  Him. 
Tlie  reason  of  all  things  is  that  man  must  be  redeemed.  If 
in  all  our  sorrows,  all  our  joys,  we  could  but  think  of  that ! 
B.  'Tis  time  there  came  some  change  in  our  present 
thoughts.  The  world  is  tired  of  its  endless  round.  Who 
is  content  ? 

W.  I  do  not  know.  There  are  many  who  try  to  make 
themselves  content,  who  think  it  a  religious  duty.  But 
who  will  fairly  look  upon  the  world  and  say:  I  am  con- 
tent? 

B.  I  would  not  be  the  man.  Unless,  indeed,  it  is  true 
that  God  is  redeeming  man,  and  that  all  this  history  is  the 
destroying  of  the  death  within  him.  If  I  could  beUeve 
that  I  should  be  happy. 

W.  You  would  be.  You  could  not  help  it.  The  power 
of  an  overwhelming  joy  would  carry  you  along,  compel- 
Img  you  to  throw  all  your  heart  and  soul  into  God's  work. 
It  would  save  you  to  believe  ;  to  believe  in  Christ,  the 
Redeemer  of  the  world. 


11 


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{ 


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